Preface

It is a great privilege to guest-edit this special issue of American Imago, “Intersections between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis.” It is a privilege for two sets of reasons: (1) the high quality of the journal and its discerning editor, Peter L. Rudnytsky, and the opportunity to work closely with academic philosophers and psychoanalysts on developing their original writings, and (2) I have long felt that philosophy and psychoanalysis belong together, and I love them both.

This love for two areas of scholarly endeavor is hardly surprising, as philosophy and psychoanalysis share so much in the way of content and concepts (for example, a strong interest in both content and concepts), despite very different methodologies. Philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, epistemology, and ethics (in various combinations) concern how the human mind operates, how we know, believe, perceive, imagine, desire, dream, fantasize; how we should behave; how we do behave—and all these are central topics in psychoanalysis as well. Further, both philosophy and psychoanalysis deal with questions of the human will, agency, the self and what constitutes it, and self-knowledge. And, of course, the foregoing list is far from complete.

Regarding the title of this issue, the choice of the plural intersections is intentional because each of the original articles herein represents a unique blend of philosophy and psychoanalysis. Krista Lawlor, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, in her piece, “Knowing Beliefs, Seeking Causes,” gives a convincing account of the gain in freedom and self-awareness that can be achieved when one allows oneself to know one's own beliefs, drawing not only on the rational evidence one has for them, but also on one's own feelings and reactions as a cause for beliefs. Such causal self-interpretation obviously becomes vital when the beliefs in question are not rational ones. Tolerating both the ownership and criticisms of one's other-than-rational beliefs