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This special issue of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context draws its papers from the IAPSP Conference, held last fall in Boston and focused on “Critical Clinical Moments in the Treatment Process.” As I reviewed the many wonderful conference papers in order to construct this issue, papers brimming with rich clinical description and creative analytic understanding, work, and dialogue, a familiar question began buzzing in my brain. It is a question that students, candidates, and patients new to contemporary psychoanalysis often ask: “Is there something I can read?” It is also a question that instructors ask as they search for good teaching tools. There is a hunger for writing that clearly explains contemporary analytic process or illustrates a particular idea or captures contrasting formulations and approaches to analytic problems. Therefore, I have edited this issue of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context with this question in mind; that is, I have tried to collect “something that people can read,” which not only contains lively clinical material and commentary, but also furnishes accessible teaching materials that survey contemporary psychoanalytic ideas.
I have winnowed the selection here to five sets of papers, four of which organize around clinical presentations. In these four, the clinical narratives are of primary interest, and theoretical concerns emerge from those narratives. Daniel Goldin and Joe Lichtenberg authored the fifth set of papers, which are theoretical. Yet, although they are primarily theory papers, each author uses specific clinical material to illustrate contrasting theories. I include this set because they are thoughtful and well-written dialogic pieces, ones that underline some dominant but conflicting ideas within contemporary psychoanalysis.
In Group One, Ferguson, Brothers, and Slowiaczek tell clinical stories, each of which challenge the analyst to address her subjective needs, feelings, and responsiveness. Each author holds to the conviction—derive