From the Editors

In this issue of the Review of Books, we are pleased to present a new essay format that we hope you will enjoy: a young colleague's discerning reading and personal profile of an influential analytic author looking back on his long life and career. In an essay focusing on two of Joseph Lichtenberg's recent works, reviewer Sameer Khan weaves observations from a guided tour of Lichtenberg's extensive photography collection with an exploration of his lifelong contribution to psychoanalytic thought: an expansion of Kohut's self psychology into a theory of “motivational systems.” As Khan notes, Lichtenberg's work often “shift[s] emphasis away from pathology and … toward shoring up what goes right in development … toward the ways human beings adapt their energies to grow, forge connections, and generate meaning.” Through Khan's interaction with Lichtenberg, we see the inextricable link of the theorizer's personhood with his particular contribution to psychoanalytic thought (a link no less essential for any living analytic theorist than it was for Freud, whose laser focus on the oedipal surely reflected matters of deep personal import to him!). We also see what happens when a young clinician confronts a clinical/theoretical perspective that is largely new to him and works to absorb it into his developing understanding of our field.

Psychoanalysis and the Visual Arts

From Khan's essay on Lichtenberg we move to Sandra Hershberg's review of work by another psychoanalyst whose immersion in the visual arts informs her contributions to our literature. Laurie Wilson is both a trained art historian and a practicing clinical psychoanalyst, known for her earlier biography of the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Her most recent book is another exquisite work of psychoanalytic biography—this one, of the groundbreaking twentieth-century artist Louise Nevelson. Though Nevelson also produced collages, drawings, and prints, she is best known