Editorial Note on the Fiftieth Anniversary of American Imago

American Imago is pleased to mark its Fiftieth Anniversary this year. The name American Imago was conceived by Otto Rank and Hanns Sachs. Hanns Sachs, its first editor, had been co-editor with Freud of Imago and wished to continue the Imago tradition in the United States, where he along with many analysts were making their new homes after having fled from Europe. Shortly before his death, Freud agreed with Sachs' suggestion that a periodical be founded, called American Imago, which, like Imago, would stress the non-medical application of psychoanalysis to “culture, science and the arts.”

Though Freud was instrumental in the founding of American Imago and was to have been its first editor, he died some months before the first issue appeared. Hanns Sachs, in his role as co-founder with Freud and editor, wrote a Preface to the first number of American Imago, which we reprint here:

The American Imago lost its editor before the publication of its first issue. We cannot look out for another one to replace him. Men of his stamp appear only at long intervals in the history of mankind. Nor will we imitate those knights who won a victory after their hero's death with the help of the Cid's empty armor riding in their front.

When the plan for this periodical was proposed to Freud he greeted it wholeheartedly and consented to become its editor. “I wish I could do more for it,” he wrote in the same letter, July 7, 1938, in which he presented it with its name, American Imago. Eight months later came his last letter in which he spoke with calmness of his approaching end: “The ‘Moses’ is not an unworthy leavetaking.”