Editorial

Our treatment rooms offer a unique place to study the complexity of the human mind. As psychoanalysts, we try to understand the intricate interaction between human motivational systems, affects, emotions and thought processes. These processes are shaped by the actual biological and social environment. But it is more than that. The psychotherapeutic process involves memories from a state of mind, which is pre-linguistic, not experienced verbally. It is a form of communication built on affects, rhythms and bodily memories from the interaction with the mother, both her body and her mind. As analysts, we are involved in a living relation with our patients, and the analyst examines this relation and transforms it into thoughts and words.

From our psychoanalytical practice, we have learnt that nature is our destiny. There is, however, also a social side. Thoughts open up for other dimensions. They allow man to leave the direct interaction and shape new dimensions of reality related to words and narratives as well as to bureaucratic and legal systems. Preformed fantasies are distributed 24 hours per day through mass media channels. Preformed patterns of action are stored as algorithms in computer systems of ever-increasing complexity. All over the world, authorities and other organisations, such as insurance companies, demand loyalty to these systems of thought. As a result of this development, instrumental and strategic communication increase in importance while the amount of time spent on private communication aimed at understanding and forming new meaning decreases. This development is a consequence of information technology. Its speed, its capacity to handle huge amounts of information and link the world through the Internet shapes a new dimension of reality, a new virtual reality. In other ways, it is an unknown, untouched and promising land, which we are just beginning to explore.

In this issue of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, authors from different parts