Letter to the Editors

Dear Kurt Jacobsen and David Morgan,

This is Gail Lewis, named as a member of the Editorial Board for Free Associations. Frankly, this membership has been meaningless as I have never been approached for any input into the editorial process, or more generally development of editorial policy. Perhaps this is not how you run the journal. This email, that acts as Letter to the Editors, is however, extremely meaningful.

It is a public letter of resignation stimulated by my understanding that you are planning to publish a piece by Daniel Burston and Cary Nelson entitled ‘Under Siege’. The piece purports to be an intervention into the “crisis” in psychoanalysis, or at least within certain psychoanalytic institutions, including their training practices. It is presented as a balanced account of the elements they believe to have led to the ‘crisis”, making claims of a commitment to truth and self-knowledge that they see as at the core of psychoanalytic practice. That many, if not all, constituencies within the spectrum of the psychoanalytic world, share the commitment to truth and self-knowledge, is probably something that can be taken for granted. What cannot be taken for granted nor buried under self-proclaimed suggestion that these two men are the holders and arbiters of what is ‘real’ truth, is that the character, shape and causes of ‘truth’ will be linked to the differential positioning within structures and practices of power occupied by different individuals and groups. These of course will be reflected in their phenomenological, sociological, inter subjective and intra-psychic dynamics.

By now, I do not need to rehearse these themes, nor do I need to rehearse the violence, racist and misogynist thrust (and I choose that word deliberately here) of the Burston and Nelson piece, since I am aware that at least one commissioned response, that by Carter J. Carter offers a thorough refutation of their article, revealing its lies, its fabrication of a theoretical approach that d