The Buried, but Recently Unearthed Treasure of Sandor Ferenczi’s Work: Its Relevance to Current Practice and Sociocultural Life

Sandor Ferenczi contributed some of the best formulations of complex trauma and dissociation that exist. No one has described more passionately than Ferenczi the traumatic induction of dissociative trance with its resulting fragmentation of the personality. His concept of identification with the aggressor (which differed significantly from Anna Freud's later concept using the same term) describes how the traumatized child splits/dissociates the perpetrating aspects from the nurturing aspects of the aggressor and internalizes these in separate self-states, enabling the traumatically overwhelmed child to maintain a bond of tenderness with the aggressor. This article applies Ferenczi's concept of identification with the aggressor, along with some of Freud's and Bion's concepts of group dynamics, to the bond with and appeal of authoritarian leaders to their followers. Here, we find both dissociated parts that Ferenczi described operating in tandem, involving an idealization of the aggressor simultaneous with the enactment of aggressor-identified parts.