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The article by Florence Bonime and Marianne H. Eckardt was enthusiastically accepted by the referees to whom it was submitted. We are happy to have published such a scholarly and thought-provoking paper. Its acceptance for publication does not mean acceptance of all the ideas expressed. As a matter of fact, often the good quality of a paper is determined by the dissent that it may generate.
The Journal has published in the past psychoanalytic papers on Hamlet and other literary topics. As a journal we are thus open to all reputable approaches which may enlighten the reader about the relation between psychoanalysis and other disciplines like literature, science, history, philosophy, etc.
The remarks which follow are made by me not as the editor, but as a reader of the Journal. Bonime asks, “If the lifelike quality of literary characters is illusory, then is psychoanalyzing these characters a legitimate practice?” In my opinion it is. Are dreams of our patients not illusory? Myths, poems, fairy tales, although illusory, have been analyzed, as Eckardt, too, admits. Personally I believe that everything which springs from the human psyche is analyzable. We must be aware, however, that psychic reality is different from external reality.
Bonime stresses what she calls “compressions” or artificial cuts forced in the writing of dramas, novels, etc. These “compressions” are actually selections. The writer tells us only what is significant, what he believes will make us infer much more than is expressed, and what responds to some aesthetic requirements. Although with the method of free association Freud tried to obviate any selection, the fact remains that even our analysands select, and we analysts select in our inquiries. Our patients are not going to tell us what they ate for breakfast unless this is particularly significant in a given situation.