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An important essay on culture opens this issue. Mario Rendon traces the history of the phenomenon of culture to its origin in nature and connects it to religion, its earliest expression. The romantic movement introduced the concepts of culture, ethnicity, nationalism, and self, and it was at this time that we began to see and recognize ourselves as steps in the process. Psychoanalysis then took up the study of the self as a dynamic product of conflict between nature and culture. This is a Hegelian theme, according to Rendon, and he views Hegel as the pivotal figure in the history of culture. Dialectical thinking and dialectical method link Freud, Horney, Lacan, and Hegel. Rendon calls Freud the first researcher of human intersubjectivity. His original, new type of study of the psychology of the unconscious requires a revolutionary approach, the dialectic method. According to Rendon, Freud's psychological intuitive genius, however, was at constant war with his desire to adhere to the laws of science. Horney, on the other hand, was not constrained by Freud's desire for a strictly scientific psychoanalysis. In her terminology, she is the most Hegelian psychoanalyst in Rendon's view. From the Horneyan perspective, the process of humanization takes place through seduction of the other, leaving the individual split and alienated. Lacan advances Horney's thoughts; he also rejects the instinctual unconscious: everything in the unconscious, in his view, comes via symbols from the outside world. Rendon concludes that Horney's culture is the symbolic order for Lacan. The Lacanian individual is split and alienated by nature, and this split cannot be overcome. The theme of recognition also links Horney and Lacan, Rendon further explains: for Lacan the apprehension of the self is through the image of the other, while Horney sees the idealized image as a compulsive attempt to be recognized by the other through what the archaic other would have wished from the person. Rendon mainta