Judith Dupont (1925-2025)

Judith Dupont (1925–2025), the last person alive to have known Sándor Ferenczi, devoted over half a century to rescuing the Hungarian psychoanalyst's work from obscurity. Connected to Ferenczi through family ties—her grandmother was his patient, her aunt married Michael Balint—she methodically translated his complete works, clinical diary, and correspondence with Freud into French, making France the first country to rediscover this once-maligned thinker. What she most valued in Ferenczi was his rejection of analytic authority in favour of empathy, his permanent self-questioning, and his refusal to found a school or seek disciples. Before her death, she donated the Ferenczi archives to the Freud Museum in London, symbolically closing a turbulent chapter in psychoanalytic history. Thanks to her efforts, Ferenczi is now a classic—yet, true to his spirit, there is no Ferenczian orthodoxy, only ongoing dialogue.