Editorial

It is with pleasure that we introduce you to the second issue of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies — an issue representing the quality and range of papers that we welcome as part of the fruit borne of the labors of our contributors — all of whom are creatively generating the application of psychoanalytic knowledge and thought to a multiplicity of topics: Halperin on the special problems and issues involved in treating immigrants, Miliora on the psychological roots of Usama bin Laden's convictions, LaMothe on the defensive use of religion, Barbara Young with a highly personal account of how her interest in photography helped her rebirth as a psychoanalyst at age 40, and Nikelly on the social underpinnings of nostalgia, with comments on the use of the concept in treating homesickness and other separations. Salman Akhtar's Book Review and Commentary section surveys several books on new technologies, such as phone therapy, psychological issues raised by modern infertility techniques, and the growing problem caused by cybersex.

Our journal welcomes papers involving psychoanalytic thinking across the broad spectrum of human knowledge and disciplines, with special focus on psychoanalytic thinking applied to social problems. Having just returned from the Winter Meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York, it is consummately clear to those of us who work in applied areas that not only does the world need our understanding of how human beings work, both as individuals and in groups, but also that the profession of psychoanalysis, particularly as it has been institutionally constituted in the United States, needs to take note of a comment by Nikko Canner, an organizational consultant to the American Psychoanalytic Association, that “we have the opportunity to achieve greatness by taking psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought out into the world or we become obsolete”.

In his endorsement of an edited collection on terrorism by Varvi