Reprinting the Classics

THE EDITORS OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYSIS have initiated a new feature, the reprinting of classic psychoanalytic articles, as well as those from other sources, that are as relevant to the science, with invited responses from diverse contributors who will analyze, elaborate and bring up-to-date the seminal insights offered in the original publications. This is very much in the tradition of the William Alanson White Institute whose founders strongly believed in the exposure of psychoanalysts to the widest possible array of contributions, from all disciplines, for a deeper and broader understanding of the individual and the human condition. It was anticipated at the Institute's founding that the participating disciplines would include the behavioral sciences, the physical sciences, literature, art, history, economics and philosophy.

And ad hoc Publications Committee of the White Institute and Society explored the possibility of a publication devoted to interdisciplinary interchanges during 1960–62. The title, Dialogue, was chosen to indicate the hoped for responses and counterresponses to urgent current issues that would lend themselves to a multifaceted scrutiny in the proposed journal. The original Steering Committee was composed of Charles Clay Dahlberg, John L. Schimel, Sidney Davis, J.D., Adjunct Professor at New York University Law School and a trustee of the White Institute, along with Jules Masserman, Jurgen Ruesch, Franz Alexander and Leon Salzman. The idea created a great deal of excitement and offers of cooperation from among many of the leading thinkers of the time in a number of fields.

Alas, the necessary funds for the ambitious (and expensive) proposal for Dialogue were not available and the idea for the journal was shortly succeeded by the more modest and manageable concept of the current Contemporary Psychoanalysis, which I believe has always shared the same broad vision of our founders. It continues now in this vein. Kurt Lewin's "Aristotelian a