From Freud’s love of transference to an ethics of affectivity in Sándor Ferenczi

This article discusses the conception of love in the psychoanalytic clinic, from Freudian neutrality, representative of early psychoanalytic technique, to the shift toward what we call an “ethics of affectivity,” with the thought of Sándor Ferenczi as its central axis. Starting from Freudian warnings about transference and countertransference, we propose rethinking the analyst's position beyond interpretation and abstinence. In Ferenczi, the analyst's love emerges as an ethical attitude, marked by tact, empathy and emotional availability, capable of offering an environment of trust and recognition. Without departing from Freudian foundations, but seeking to overcome their impasses, Ferenczi maintains that the analyst's implication does not compromise technique but deepens it. We argue that Ferenczi's radical conception of love inaugurates a clinic situated in an intersubjective field, in which listening opens to the unsymbolized zones of trauma. Thus, the analyst's love does not present itself as a deviation, but as a constitutive force of the analytic experience and a fundamental resource for transformations in analysis.