My study is inspired by the clinical and meta-psychological contributions of Sándor Ferenczi, an underexplored voice, in the psychoanalytic understanding of creative processes. Ferenczi discusses fragmentation and reconstruction in the realm of creativity, and the creative reconstructive power of Orpha (Ferenczi, 1932a), a force against psychic death, following traumatic experience. To illustrate the creative process, I refer to the discourse on trauma and creativity, in the diary of the Italian poet Alda Merini (1986), fuelled by her post-traumatic narrative of her history of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Literature here serves as a psychic space and a base for reconstruction in and after the transition to a new broken existence.

Psychoanalysis has been grounded in Freud's discovery of the profound impact of unconscious processes on human being and meaning. And yet, his theories and technique pushed towards the more rational realms of meaning-making. He recognized the extent to which female development remained a "dark" and unexplored "continent" but seemed to turn a deaf ear to those women, such as Karen Horney, who had a seat at the table as psychoanalysis was forming. One hundred years later, Horney's theorizing about what impedes our ability to recognize more fully the capacities and vulnerabilities inherent in the feminine remains relevant. In this paper, I explore some of the forgotten, or under-valued threads from women who have made significant contributions to our field. I hope to invite greater integration of those capacities disparately marked male or female, qualities which are essential to our development as embodied, rational beings.

There are two ways to conceive of fragments in Ferenczi's work. They may result from a shock, or they may be related to an original multiplicity from which subjectivity itself derives. In this paper I take into consideration the two perspectives of fragments in Ferenczian texts, focusing more on one of them-the fragment as irreducible to a unity. It is a contemporary issue, since subjectivities, and their affective, aesthetic and political relations work predominantly in fragmentary mode today. So we are, as psychoanalysts, summoned to respond to a fundamental ethical problem: are we going to take a nostalgic attitude, regretting that fragmented forms have prevailed over more systematic and identitarian ones, or are we going to refine our sensibilities and our perceptions to apprehend what is new, worthy and creative in these subjective and aesthetic forms? Once more, Ferenczi can help us to deal with new phenomena in clinical work.