Thalassa

In 1914, Freud wrote in On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement: &quote;Hungary, so near geographically to Austria, and so far from it scientifically, has produced only one collaborator, Sandor Ferenczi, but one that indeed outweighs a whole society&quote;.Sandor Ferenczi, one of Freud's first disciples, established the study of psychoanalysis in Hungary and went on to make contributions of his own to many aspects of the subject, including study of the personality, the psychopathology of neurosis, therapeutic techniques, and psychoanalytic theory.In Thalassa, Ferenczi expands the symbols of the phallus and vagina into cosmic symbols, not by reference to myths but by his interpretations of embryonic, physiological, psychological facts. He develops the view that the whole of life is determined by a tendency to return to the womb, equating the process of birth with the phylogenetic transition of animal life from water to land, and linking coitus to the idea of &quote;thalassal regression&quote;: &quote;the longing for the sea-life from which man emerged to primeval times&quote;.