Editorial: Shellac records, the Cartesian Catastrophe and Psychoanalysis

I happened to listen to a radio program the other day about a man, who with modern technique restored the music from old shellac and vinyl records. Especially fascinating was that he could extract musical phenomena from these records that the old technique had not allowed to reach the human ear. So his restored recordings did not only retrieve what had been damaged, but they reproduced the originally recorded music in a more authentic way. This man performed this work with an obvious wholehearted dedication.

I have a strong impression that the cupboard of psychoanalysis contains an enormous collection of old psychoanalytic “shellac and vinyl records”. Many of these apparently worn and rasping records are seldom or never listened to, while a small selection is played again and again. In addition, the registration technique has been such that only the sound of a few voices have been heard. The articles which we published last year under the heading “Behind the scenes. Freud in correspondence” (soon to appear in book format) are examples of a kind of restoration work, which gives us a fuller orchestration of what has transpired. In a similar vein the papers and the book review in the present issue of IFP are the result of diligent and dedicated listening and bringing forth to us readers tunes we have neglected, did not know about or did not expect to exist. Our reception of these melodies will not only add to our knowledge of historical reality, but also influence what we perceive in our consulting rooms.

While writing this editorial I had reason, in connection with another work, to consult a book I have not looked into for many years, The unconscious before Freud by L.L. Whyte (1). I can not refrain from giving you some impression of his creative restorative work, as it concerns our self-understanding as psychoanalysts. Whyte dates the origins of his book back to the years after the first World War when he “innocently imagined that Freud had just discovered the unconsci