Editorial

This issue of the journal, as the previous one, is dedicated to the project “Freud in Correspondence”. The project, whose editors are Patrick Mahony, Carlo Bonomi and Jan Stensson, will also be published in book form. As one of the initiators of the project, I am especially grateful to Jan Stensson, the Editor-in-Chief of International Forum of Psychoanalysis, who has accepted the challenge of enlarging the natural borders of the journal.

One of the goals of the project was to fill the existing gap between the average psychoanalytic reader and the cultural legacy represented by Freud's main correspondences, an increasing number of which are in the process of being published for the first time or re-edited in a “complete” form. The reading of letters is always a difficult reading, since it requires an exceptional degree of dedication before it becomes rewarding. Moreover, since Freud was a tireless letter writer, the difficulty of the task is multiplied by the extension and quantity of his correspondences, which may paradoxically have a discouraging effect. Last but not least, the letters between Freud and his main correspondents do not necessarily meet the specific interests of the practitioner, primarily oriented towards clinical and theoretical issues. Nevertheless, these letters represent a unique door into the history of psychoanalysis, permitting us to find out the origins of a new concept, to illuminate the context in which a dispute took place, to cast out the interpersonal relationships between Freud and his followers, and even to get a glimpse into the unconscious side of these relationships. Through them, we are enabled to appreciate the many elements which converge into the ongoing process of theory-building. In brief, these correspondences restore a “body” to the psychoanalytical literature, as they enlarge our view of its theoretical corpus.

This body is a social body, since the act of writing a letter is a communicative action which influences the corres