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This Special Issue, guest edited by the eminent psychoanalyst, recipient of the 2015 Sigourney Award, Vamik Volkan (2015), with intriguing contributions from an international team of psychoanalysts (Beyoğlu, 2015; Gonzalez-Torres and Fernández-Rivas, 2015; Schmidt-Löw-Beer, Atria and Davar, 2015; Streeck-Fischer, 2015; Vallabhaneni, 2015), completes our 75th Diamond Jubilee Volume. The topic of this Special Issue on the “Intertwining of External and Internal Events in the Changing World,” has been an important part of the heritage of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. Quoting Rendon, “venturing outside the intrapsychic” (1981, p. 351), and the resulting dynamic interplay of the interpersonal and intrapsychic, defined Karen Horney, our Founding Editor's holistic and systemic thinking from the earliest days of her work (Horney, 1930). This interconnectedness of the external and the internal has been guiding us in seeing the individual and the environment as mutually and reciprocally influencing each other (Kelman, 1958, p. 80). Culture is for Horney what language is for Lacan, writes Rendon (1991), and by culture we think of the sum of all cultural creations such as language, art, religion, law, the state, and it also includes all the values that we learned, neurotic values included (p. 293). This perspective is nourished by considerations from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, religion, and a deep appreciation of how external forces become internalized and structured in the developing individual (Ingram and Lerner, 1992, p. 41).
These historical themes resonate in the papers that Volkan assembled, as the authors reflect on the external and internal events of our time. We are pleased to offer our readers a stimulating and most fitting conclusion to our 75th celebratory volume.
Giselle Galdi, Ph.D.
Editor