THALASSA is the journal of the Sándor Ferenczi Society, Budapest.
THALASSA is the title of Sándor Ferenczi’s classical work.
THALASSA symbolically refers to the sea, the womb, the origin, the source.
THALASSA is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to free investigations in psychoanalysis, culture and society.
THALASSA has roots in the historical traditions of Hungarian psychoanalysis, but is not committed to any particular school or authority.
THALASSA welcomes all original contributions, historical, theoretical or critical, dealing with the common problems of psychoanalysis and the humanities.
The first issue of THALASSA (1990/1) is based on the proceedings of the first scientific conference of the Sándor Ferenczi Society, held in Budapest, 1989, under the title Psychoanalysis and Society. The second issue (1991/1) is devoted to the life and work of Sándor Ferenczi. The third issue of our review (1991/2) deals with the relationship between psychoanalysis and hermeneutics. The fourth issue (1992/1) is devoted to the problems of the relationship between psychoanalysis and politics. The fifth issue (1992/2) is a memorial volume devoted to the life and work of Géza Róheim. The sixth issue (1993/1) contains psychoanalytic studies on language, fiction and cognition. The seventh issue (1993/2) is devoted to the life work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The focus theme of the eighth and ninth issue (1994/1-2) are the effects and aftereffects of the Holocaust - from both psychoanalytic and psychosocial point of view. This issue commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary. The tenth and eleventh issue (1995/1-2) contains articles on the relationship between psychoanalysis, postmodernism, art, and mass phenomena. The main topic of the twelfth issue (1996/1) is the relationship between psychoanalysis and feminism and related issues. The thirteenth issue (1996/2) is devoted to the life and work of Leopold Szondi, the founder of “fate analysis”, and published as well a series of newly discovered pre-psychoanalytic writings of Sándor Ferenczi.
In the next, 1997/1 issue we will publish, among others, Judith Butler’s essay on feminism and postmodernism, Jolán Orbán’s article on Lacan and Derrida, Slavoj Zizek’s essay on the obscenity of power. The 1997/2 issue will be devoted to the history of psychoanalysis in Eastern Europe. We will publish — among other articles — Alexandr Etkind’s essay on the real “Wolf Man”, the Russian émigré Sergei Pankeyev, and Wilhelm Reich’s 1929 report on the psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESENT ISSUE (1996/3)
In our section MAJOR ARTICLES we publish JESSICA BENJAMIN’s article Sameness and difference. Towards an ‘over-inclusive’ theory of gender development. In her article the author outlines how current theorising sees gender difference as developmentally integrated. She suggests as periodisation, delineating four main phases in early gender development: (1) nominal gender identification formation, (2) early differentiation of identifications in the context of separation-individuation, (3) the pre-Oedipal over-inclusive phase, and (4) the Oedipal phase. The premise of this differentiation perspective is virtually the opposite of the position that genital difference is the motor of developing gender and sexual identity. Rather, it takes of from the position according to which gender differentiation, evolving through separation conflicts AND identifications, defines and gives weight to the genital difference, which then assumes great (if not exclusive) symbolic significance in the representation of gender experience and relations. In her essay Woman, nationalism and war: “Make love not war” RADA IVEKOVIÆ‚ analyses the relationship between women and nationalism, and argues that women’s identity and relationship to the “Other” is different from that of men, hence even when women participate in nationalism it is in a less violent form. She argues, further, that the structures of nationalism are fundamentally homosocial, and antagonisms toward women of one’s own nation is one of the first forms of attack on the “Other”, and is constitutive of “extreme nationalism”. In the same section we publish as well LÍVIA NEMES’s essay The figure of enfant terrible in psychoanalysis. The author presents a psychoanalytic interpretation of the figure of the enfant terrible as personified in certain figures of the history of psychoanalytic movement as well as in literary and mythological characters. She argues that the enfant terrible is a contradictory kind of personality that might assume rather different individual characters, but, essentially, uses infantilism as disguise, and challenges social authority. By interpreting this figure, the author points out the dynamics of a social psychological phenomenon as well.
In our LITERATURE section we publish a short essay of the famous French novelist MARCEL PROUST entitled Return to Guermantes. This text is followed by the notes and commentaries of the translator, ZSUZSA LÓRÁNT, who points out a possible psychoanalytic interpretation of Marcel Proust’s life work.
In our WORKSHOP section we publish three studies. The first is a case study written by KATALIN NYERGES (“It must not be destroyed...!”). The case study is an account of a therapy with a young boy, in whom early object relational disturbances produced, in the beginning, a borderline syndrome, associated with mental retardation. The therapy was directed at establishing new models of relationship in the place of the non-existing or pathologically distorted self and object representations, thereby creating conditions for the healthy development of the ego. The second study is the work of three authors: ATTILA FORGÁCS, FERENC TÚRY and MARIETTA NÉMETH. Their article Dominance relations and eating disorders, or the devoured power deals with the psychological significance of eating. They argue that the intake of food is an ordering principle in interpersonal relations as well. Quoting examples from literature, anthropology, and history, the authors show that well-fed bodies symbolise power, and, therefore, abundant meals refer to status and authority. In the background of eating disorders we may find often disorders of dominance relations. Finally, the third article, TIHAMÉR BAKÓ’s essay My disappointment in psychoanalysis is a practising therapist’s subjective account of a difficult period of his life, and of the process of overcoming ambivalence, crisis, and regression, through self-analysis.
In the ARCHIVES section we publish BRUNO BETTELHEIM’s essay A Secret Asymmetry, originally appeared in 1983, dealing with and analysing the strange relationship between the Russian patient and would-be analyst Sabina Spielrein, Carl Gustav Jung, and Sigmund Freud. We also publish an interesting excerpt from GEORG GRODDECK’s famous book Das Buch vom Es (The Book of the Id), in which the German doctor retells, in letter form, the story of how he became a follower of Freud’s. The text is accompanied by a portrait of the author written by KATALIN VÉG, in which she presents Groddeck’s biography, an evaluation of his scientific and therapeutical activities, as well as his relationship to Freud and Sándor Ferenczi.
Our BOOK section contains a lengthy review by TIBOR KUN on the Hungarian translation of J. Pontalis and J.-B. Laplanche’s Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse, published in 1994. In the EVENTS AND INFORMATION section we publish an account taken from Partisan Review and written by EDITH KURZWEIL on the 39. International Congress of Psychoanalysis held in San Francisco in 1995.
We accept contributions in Hungarian, English, German or French. Authors are requested to provide their papers with an English and/or Hungarian summary. Original articles, reviews, reflections, and suggestions should be sent to Dr. Ferenc Erõs, Institute of Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Teréz krt. 13., H 1067 Budapest. Phone: (36-1) 322-0425, fax: (36-1) 342-0514. E-mail address: feros@orange.okt.cogpsyphy.hu
THALASSA is published by the Thalassa Foundation, Budapest (address above). Subscription and distribution: SZIGET REHABILITÁCIÓS SZÖVETKEZET, Murányi u. 21, H-1078 Budapest, phone (36-1) 342-7158.
The present issue of THALASSA was supported by the the National Cultural Fund of the Republic of Hungary, the Soros Foundation, and the Pro Renovanda Cultura Hungariae Foundation.
Our E-mail address:
thalassa@c3.hu