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I welcome Ludvig Igra's response to my Editorial (1). As part of a discussion or dialogue I think it is of value that we, at the side of more extensive articles or even books, present to each other short and pregnant formulations of our thinking. In the Editorial Board we have been considering for some time to initiate a series of investigations about central psychoanalytical concepts or assumptions—preferably such which have been elaborated more or less in different theoretical systems. One such issue which we have discussed is also brought up by Igra as “the tension between internal and external reality”. So, as a first move, we invite our readers to send us their ideas, musings, opinions etc. on INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL REALITY.
I regret the reading Igra has done à propos my speculations about the movement of ebb and flow of different psychoanalytic theories (with specific reference to Erich Fromm's thinking) and its relation to what I have designated as Zeitgeist-phenomena. Maybe some of my formulations were too condensed. I will try to clarify my view.
A basic assumption in my thinking on the nature of the human mind is that we, human beings, are more fundamentally related to each other in groups and collectively than what is generally expressed in psychoanalytic theories (2). This relatedness may be thought of as undercurrents traversing the human ocean or part of it1. These movements (David Bohm talks about “holomovements”) has mainly an implicate order (Bohm) out of which secondary explicit orders may manifest themselves (manifest from Latin manus i.e. the order of what we can grip, measure, weigh etc.). One level of explication is what we talk about as Zeitgeist. In further abstraction we note and discuss cultural-economical-political-social phenomena. In my Editorial I made some very condensed sketches on that level of explication regarding two subsequent periods in the 20th century. These sketches were intended to represent the deeper movements of which these