In this talk, I consider Ferenczi’s groundbreaking work on sexual abuse in conjunction with other projects he undertook, in which trauma, regression, and destructiveness clearly preoccupied him. In addition to attention to the landmark paper on sexual abuse, “The Confusion of Tongues” (1929/32), I will draw on his work on sexuality, his book Thalassa (2018) and on a later paper on the devastation of early neglect and trauma, “The Unwelcome Child and his Death Instinct” (1929). In addition to these papers, I link Ferenczi’s work on trauma to his paper on war neuroses (Ferenczi 1928; Harris, 2018). In this presentation, I hope to illuminate the originality and modernity of Ferenczi’s views on sexuality and the great difficulty they caused Freud.