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Psychoanalysis is a major discipline that, more than a century after Freud’s Interpretation of dreams, “adapted itself to, rather than invaded the culture of many nations.” The above point of view, that appears in the first paragraph of the Introduction of the Edinburgh international encyclopaedia of psychoanalysis, edited by Ross Skelton in 2006, apart from conveying an existing situation, can be read as an example of the well-known fact of the coexistence of a diversity of psychoanalytic cultures, be they “national” versions and variations, schools of thought, different theories, or differences in clinical practice, that form the psychoanalytic landscape, even the private culture that exists in every analyst’s office. According to Skelton this diversity (or fragmentation) is marked by a history of “mutual incomprehension” (among the schools), as the result of “a tragic tendency to split off” into “historical and theoretical schisms” of psychoanalysis (p. vii).
The editor of the Encyclopaedia considers, however, “that all the schools have more in common than the various theoretical and historical schisms suggest” (p. vii), so it is possible to compile an encyclopaedic reference work that does not refer to a single specific school of thought. Already, as he points out, there have been examples of this – the relevant works by Rycroft and Moore and Fine.
Ross Skelton, senior lecturer in philosophy and psychoanalysis at Trinity College, Dublin, has chosen a number of ways to highlight both the multifaceted nature of the psychoanalytic landscape and the connections, loans, and overlaps between different modes of psychoanalytic thought and practice. In principle, editorial responsibility is shared with four Section Editors: Bernard Burgoyne (mainly entries on Lacan), James Grotstein (object relations), Murray Stein (analytical psychology) and Cleo van Velsen (psychiatry), assisted by 12 Consultant Editors and 14 Executive Editors. The approximately 1000 entries are written