Correcting the Record: Karen Maroda on Mutual Analysis

Abstract

Nothing is more important to me in my scholarly work than to be fair even to those with whom I disagree. I am therefore grateful to Karen Maroda for bringing to my attention that I have misrepresented the views expressed in her paper “Why Mutual Analysis Failed” (Maroda, 1998) in my book on Ferenczi’s mutual analysis with Elizabeth Severn (Rudnytsky, 2022). There, quoting the following sentence from the opening paragraph of her paper, “‘The years he spent conducting a highly unorthodox treatment with her, climaxing with their adoption of mutual analysis, cast a shadow not only over Ferenczi’s clinical judgment, but also his sanity,’” I asserted that this statement by Dr. Maroda “repeats a libel originating with Ernest Jones” (p. 3). Thanks to a personal communication from Dr. Maroda, I now understand that what she meant is that Jones’s allegation “cast a shadow” over Ferenczi’s reputation in the history of psychoanalysis, not that the mutual analysis itself cast a shadow over Ferenczi’s sanity. Here is the opening paragraph of her paper in its entirety: