EDITORIAL

This Special Issue of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, which focuses on the topic “Psychoanalysis and University,” finds its ground only at the margins of the troubled debate about the value of empirical, experimental, historic, and conceptual (besides clinical, obviously) research within psychoanalysis. This number is not merely a further contribution to these thematics, so amply discussed in the last years, but will contribute an aspect of the debate that until now has been far less explored: the actual presence of psychoanalysts in the very places that are electively dedicated to the discovery and transmission of knowledge – our universities.

Today, this specific aspect of the debate on psychoanalytic research is addressed in a more explicit and less abstract way by a variety of analysts of diverse traditions, who are both psychoanalytically and academically qualified and committed (e.g. Auchincloss & Michels, 2003; Berman, 2004; Blass, 2001; Borgogno, in press; Eifermann, 1993; Enckell, 2007; Ferrari, 2009; Filho, 2002; Gilman, 2009; Glick, 2007; Hanly, 2009; Kernberg, 1993, 2007; Levy, 2009; Michels, 2007; Papadopoulos, 1997; Paul, 2007; Reiser, 1989; Robertson & Paris, 2005; Shevrin, 2003; Thomä, submitted; Wagner, 2009; Wallerstein, 1980, 2009)1 . Starting from their varied perspectives and peculiar local situations, each of them is scrutinizing not only the relationship between psychoanalysis and university in our history, but also the challenges that have hindered (and still do) a dialogue between these two worlds, and the opportunities that might result from this desirable encounter.

Although – as I myself said at the recent International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and European Psychoanalysis Federation conferences in Brussels (2008), Chicago (2009) and London (2010) – a rising awareness exists of the damage that might occur (and of the urgency of taking measures) should psychoanalysis fail to become engrained in the academic terrain, th