“It is not enough to find interpretative frames in analysis – there must be a space for analyst and analysand to really regress and live through the traumatic past again. It may sound obvious today, but it definitely was not obvious at that time. In the early 1930s, Severn and Ferenczi and Bonaparte and Freud, in both of these dyads, the problem was how to offer the analysand a space to relive and also create a safe space that this can be what can really help, and Freud was not able to do that.”
Agnes Sobolewska Alsberg, PhD
Chicago
Episode Description:
We begin by appreciating the influence of Agnes’s childhood in Warsaw as contributing to her interest in culture, history and trauma. Her parents and grandparents rarely spoke of the traumas of war which they barely survived. This all contributed to her interest in and dissertation on psychoanalysis in Central Europe. She encountered Sandor Ferenczi’s work on trauma and immersed herself in studying and writing about his novel approaches to clinical work. This led her to pursue analytic training, enabling us to compare the historian’s and analyst’s perspectives. We discuss her paper comparing Marie Bonaparte’s treatment with Freud and Elizabeth Severn’s treatment with Ferenczi which took place in 1932. Both had their considerable limitations though led to important reconsiderations in analytic technique. We consider the importance of recognizing the experiential foundation of the analytic encounter and how challenging that was in 1932 as it is today. We close with Agnes linking the fragmentation of an individual’s mind with the political fragmentations that were in the zeitgeist at that time. This will be the focus of her ongoing research.
Our Guest:
Agnes Sobolewska Alsberg, PhD is a historian of psychoanalysis, literary scholar, and translator. She is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago and a psychoanalytic candidate at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Sobolewska Alsberg is the author of several books, including Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe and the forthcoming Self-Writing in Psychoanalysis. She has published in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, American Imago, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Imágó Budapest, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, and Oxford German Studies, among many others. She is a member of the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education (IFPE), the International Sándor Ferenczi Network (ISFN), and the International Association for Spielrein Studies.
Recommended Reading:
Ferenczi, S. ([1949] 1988). “Confusion of Tongues.” Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24, 196–206.
Severn, E. (2017). “The Discovery of the Self.” In P. L. Rudnytsky (Ed.), The Discovery of the Self, pp. 86–110. Routledge.
Rudnytsky, P. L. (2022). Mutual Analysis: Ferenczi, Severn, and the Origins of Trauma Theory. Routledge.
Sobolewska Alsberg, A. (2026). “The new trauma theory and the question of ‘truth’ around 1932: The hidden history of revolutionary dyads in psychoanalysis.” International Forum of Psychoanalysis, July 6, 1–10.
Sobolewska Alsberg, A. (2026). “Life for the Future: Marie Bonaparte as a Biographer.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, April 22, 1–22.
Sobolewska Alsberg, A. (2025). “Psychoanalysis and Biography in Times of Crisis: Freud’s Late Correspondence with Marie Bonaparte.” The European Journal of Life Writing, 14, 15–33.