Preface

This special issue of American Imago is both formally and substantially devoted to working in a conceptual space between two seemingly incompatible psychoanalytic theories of the origins and structure of the human psyche—those of D. W. Winnicott and Jacques Lacan. After Melanie Klein, who preceded them, Winnicott and Lacan (along with W. R. Bion) are generally acknowledged to be the major psychoanalytic innovators since Freud. Although coming from heterogeneous cultural and professional backgrounds, Winnicott and Lacan questioned received theory in parallel ways that even now have not been fully integrated into clinical practice by many analysts. Winnicott developed a model of self, born in the context of a pediatrician's notion of a “good-enough” mothering relationship, while Lacan constructed a theory of the subject, derived from phenomenology and linguistics. Neither of these terms had found a place within classical analytic theory, whose language of psychic energies, instinctual conflict, and defensive mechanisms grew increasingly detached from traditional humanistic and spiritual concerns. Underlying the writings of Winnicott and Lacan is a complex struggle to conceive of a human being who is and is not part of the natural world and who overflows any unitary constructions of identity. They were not interested in adaptation or successful functioning as an ideal (if incomplete and illusory) therapeutic goal but in catalyzing a more authentic form of existence. In this way, they, like Bion, addressed profound philosophical issues that give their work continuing relevance.

Although the two articles by Steven Groarke and Christopher Reeves focus on the roots and affinities between Winnicott and the Christian poetic tradition, exemplified most notably by the writings of T. S. Eliot, the religious themes they draw on evoke numerous comparisons with both Bion and Lacan. For example, Reeves's observation that Eliot's concern with