Draft:Elizabeth Severn

Elizabeth Severn (born Leota Brown on November 17, 1879, died February 1959) was an American psychotherapist. From 1924 to 1932 she was the analysand of Hungarian psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi. Together, they invented the radical and controversial technique of mutual analysis, as detailed in Ferenczi’s (1932) Clinical Diary, where Severn is known as "R.N."

While her work with Ferenczi is "a pivotal point in the history and development of psychoanalysis," Freud called Severn "the evil genius of psychoanalysis." She remained outside of psychoanalytic circles for the majority of her life.

Biography

From the age of one and a half, Severn was sexually and emotionally abused by her father. A decade later, her father abandoned the family. This series of trauma was shattering for young Severn.

In 1900 she was married, by 1901 she had given birth to her daughter, an only child: Margaret Severn, later a dancer with the Greenwich Village Follies. By 1905 she had divorced, and changed her last name to Severn after the English river. By 1907 she wrote a letter to her mother indicating she had decided to become a therapist.

She moved first to Texas in 1908 to work as a clinician and then moved to London, working as a metaphysicist and therapist, promoting "the power of positive thinking, will dreams, visualization, and telepathic healing."

From 1911 to 1919 Severn took on the title of doctor, though there is no evidence she had formal training as either a doctor or a psychoanalyst. She was, however, an ardent student of psychology and behavior and an accomplished clinician. Ferenczi referred to her with the title of "Dr." to Freud, with whom she had an interview.

1920 lecture is where she referred to psychoanalytical concepts for the first time.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science and a proponent of individual healing, was an early influence on her, as was Émile Coué, who also stressed an individualistic, nonauthoritarian therapeutic system.

In 1924, experiencing mental agony and becoming suicidal, she consulted Ferenczi in Budapest. After a brief break, returning to New York, she met with Ferenczi again in 1925, and despite an intensive analysis, a breakthrough only arrived in 1928, devised from recollections based on trance states.

According to a personal letter from Margaret written in 1991. “My mother was a one-woman show. She had no friends or colleagues, only patients." Several of her patients followed Severn to Budapest to continue therapy with her. However, she remained outside of theraputic circles in Budapest.

Ferenci's death in 1933 ended Severn's mutual analysis. In late 1939, Severn left London, where she had been living, for New York, where she lived out the last 20 years of her life in close daily communication with her daughter.

Mututal analysis with Ferenczi

Throughout her life Severn both suffered from mental illness and experimented with clinical solutions. As a child, Severn suffered from headaches, an eating disorder, and nervous breakdowns, often retreating to mental sanitoriums. By as early as 1916 she was experimenting with autohypnosis and self-induced trance states to access early eras of her life, when she experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her father.

After continued intensive analysis with Ferenczi she was in a state near death around 1929 or 1930. At this point Severn demanded that Ferenczi allow her to analyze him. Suspecting negative countertransference, Severn stated that the analysis would remain at an impasse until Ferenczi's negative feelings were worked through.

In mutual analysis, admitting that he harbored dislike of Severn, Ferenczi and Severn increased trust and saw an improvement in therapeutic relations. Ferenczi wrote of "R.N." (Severn) in mutual analysis, “Who should get credit for this success?. . . Foremost, of course, the patient, who . . . never ceased fighting for her rights."

Over the course of her analysis with Ferenczi, the analytic dyad also developed the idea of the Orpha function based on Severn's belief in her clairvoyance, which both she and Ferenczi understood to be traumatically derived.

Severn published three books, all of which have been historically ignored, including Psychotherapy: Its Doctrine and Practice (1913) andThe Discovery of the Self (1993), written shortly after the last time she saw Ferenczi before his death.