Editor's Letter

Once again, I'm at the threshold between the world I knew and the pandemic world forced upon me, balancing open and closed, retreating and returning. And, waiting. Images of the transition to post-pandemic life — “opening up after closing down” and “returning to normal” — point to how simple metaphors of space and time are used to describe more complex, multidimensional psychic processes. The image of closed to open isn't untrue; it just moves from isolation and claustrophobia to freedom and expansion too neatly: one extreme collapsing into its opposite. A similar reversal of time occurs when we speak about “returning to normal,” as if there will ever be a normal to return to, given all that has changed. Thinking about imagery and language, perhaps my use of “threshold” is not a useful metaphor either since an image of a singular point between inner and outer doesn't describe how inside and outside create each other simultaneously.

Freud's description of the children's “game” of fort da illustrates how the development of illusion mediates the space between “gone” and “there.” When something is placed out of sight, it poses a problem: it is out of sight but is it out of mind? Not for the child who has been able to tolerate loss through the development of illusion. This child pulls the hidden toy back into vision, suspended between two worlds, knowing that the toy did not disappear, while simultaneously experiencing something of the loss so that each re-finding feels as thrilling as the first time. Achieving the capacity for illusion allows the child to tolerate the increasing unavailability of caretakers and makes way for the self to develop in an ongoing relationship with the external environment. This adapting of inner need to outer reality continues throughout life.

When things are going well, this creative intermediary space functions as a sort of interior home, transitioning from the familiar to the unknown. Without this creative space, or when an imbalance exists