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The fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association presents a special occasion for an issue celebrating the growth and diversity of psychoanalytic research. We are currently witness to an array of rigorous inquiries targeting psychoanalytic theory, processes, practice, and outcomes (see, e.g., Bucci 2001; Fonagy 2000; Luborsky et al. 2001; Luborsky and Crits-Christoph 1990; Shapiro and Emde 1995). This rich landscape represents the fruition of much successful collaboration across several related disciplines—developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, neuropsychology, and psycholinguistics. Psychoanalytic investigators are increasingly engaged in the interdisciplinary boundary crossing urged on us a decade ago by Holzman and Aronson (1992) in their challenging paper, “Psychoanalysis and Its Neighboring Sciences: Paradigms and Opportunities.”
More recently this motif surfaced again, in Bucci's reflections (2001) on the implications of several research reports. Emphasizing the need for psychoanalysis to further enhance its links with neighboring disciplines and to continue building bridges between psychoanalytic investigators and other scientists, she speaks of a “psychoanalytic science”:
Such a science needs to draw on related fields … and in return has much to offer them. There needs to be renewed emphasis on a theoretical framework… within which the concepts of psychoanalysis may be systematically defined, in terms of one another and in relation to observable events, and within which measures, purportedly of related or similar constructs, may be compared. Normative data are needed on relevant variables to allow meaningful and reliable interpretation of results in clinical groups. Also needed is an increased emphasis on ethnic and cultural diversity … [p. 66].