Between the Tale and the Dream: Sándor Ferenczi-Trauma and Dreams

AI Summary

Canetti's story, perhaps a dream, illuminates early trauma centrality and the body as register of deep somatic and psychic pain.
Ferenczi conceptualises the infantile ego as an extension of the adult ego, able to structure or destructure early split-off trauma.
Narration distinguishes two traumatic stages: an inferred relational level, and a manifest, real level reflecting failure in primary libidinal cathexis.

Am J Psychoanal. 2026 Jun 1. doi: 10.1057/s11231-026-09556-7. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The analysis of the story “The Curse” by Canetti (1977; it could have been a dream) allowed us to address concepts such as early trauma in Ferenczi, trauma in Freud, the body as a register of deep pain that houses perhaps even deeper psychic pain. Trauma occupies a principal place. It is a real trauma that cannot be linked; it is split off. In this sense, Ferenczi proposes thinking about the constitution of the infantile ego as an extension of the adult ego, thus this ego can operate as a structuring or de-structuring of the early trauma. The narration of this story allows us to think about the traumatic events in two stages. One is inferred, and the other is heartbreakingly manifest. One speaks to us about object relations, and the second deals with the real experience and refers to the failure in primary libidinal cathexis.

PMID:42230807 | DOI:10.1057/s11231-026-09556-7

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