Report on the Sigmund Freud Center, Jerusalem

The Sigmund Freud Center continues to serve the goals of psychoanalytic study and research and providing a bridge between the academic and psychoanalytic worlds. An autonomous academic Center, it is located in the Social Science Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and maintains a special relationship with the Department of Psychology. In 1989-1990 the Freud Chair was occupied by Prof Bennett Simon of Harvard University. Since then Shmuel Erlich, who is a Training Analyst in the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and Professor in the Psychology Department of the Hebrew University, has served as Director of the Freud Center.

The Sigmund Freud Center supports research in numerous areas of psychoanalytic theory and applied aspects. Smolen Fund scholarships and modest stipends were distributed for the last several years to doctoral students, as well as young faculty members, engaged in psychoanalytically-relevant research. The Smolen Fund was, however, a gift given over a specified period and will not be available in the future. The areas in which work is currently under way represent an interesting and divergent panoply of psychoanalytic interests and questions: Rhythmicity in Early Mother-Infant Affect Attunement; Asceticism and Experiential Dimensions—the Varieties of Religious Experience of Nuns; A Rereading and Evaluation of the Repetition Compulsion; Fathers' Impact on the Psychological Development of Their Offsprings; and Reality and Fantasy, to mention but a few.

During the academic year 1991-1992 the Center sponsored a series on: Early Development—Current Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Several visiting guest lecturers participated in the course of the year: Drs Sylvia Brody and Eleanor Galenson from New York, and Dr Peter Fonagy of the Anna Freud Centre and University College London. The series was opened with presentations by Drs Donald Cohen and Phyllis