Guest Editor's Introduction: On Psychoanalysis and Fiction, or Psychoanalysis in the Making

An exploration of the juncture between psychoanalysis and fiction is not a new topic in psychoanalytic literature by any means. Nevertheless, I hope that this special issue, assembled under the title, “Psychoanalysis in the Making,” will open up some new—or at least lesser trodden—avenues of reflection on the topic. Thus, rather than collecting still more essays about how psychoanalytic theories and concepts refer to fiction, poetry, theatre, film, sculpture, or painting, instead of essays that dissect works of art with the surgical tools that an analytic metapsychology might supply, instead of filling these pages with tales about analysis, its couches, histories, and accoutrements, I have opted for another approach. In gathering the pieces that follow here, I set out a guiding question, which served as a principle of selection. Rather than asking how psychoanalysis might think about a particular entry, I decided to ask how a particular piece might think about psychoanalysis—even, in some cases think psychoanalysis. Which is to say, add to the thinking that constitutes psychoanalysis, expand upon, profitably challenge, or invent anew its terms. (This is why some contributors here are not psychoanalysts; and when they are, often they wear their analysts' hats a bit askew.)

There is a paradox at work here, of course: Sometimes psychoanalysis might be most itself when it does not appear to be psychoanalysis. I hope that, like King Meneláos, psychoanalytic readers will cling to these shape-changing forms to the end and discover in their protean shifts, some whisper or hope of delivery—or at the very least, a promise of diversion,