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This issue of The Journal draws from The Academy's 36th annual meeting, held in Washington, DC in May of 1992. Its theme was “Empathy and Intuition: Psychoanalysis and the Brain-An Interdisciplinary Quest.” Our aim was to promote “the development of communication among psychoanalysts and their colleagues in other disciplines in science and the humanities.” We hoped to create a setting facilitating experiences of intuition, and imagined panels made up of experts from neighboring areas of exploration. They would hear their copanelists' presentations and would suddenly see their own work from a new angle, in a different light, and would radiate the pleasure of discovery. Although I cannot report that such moments actually occurred, I do know that the sale of cassette tapes of the recorded panels was unusually brisk. Over coffee, people told each other they had missed a neat panel in the neighboring hall. The ambiance was right.
Stanley Palombo and I wish to thank our program committee for their enthusiastic teamwork. Each committee member took an area within the overall theme and sought out representative presenters: Christopher Bever, history of psychoanalysis; Susan Lazar, gender issues; Cass Ragan, political science; Joseph Silvio, trauma. Stan Palombo brought his expertise on dreams and neuroscience; I focused on schizophrenia and Ferenczi. As we shared our ideas for panels, some of the other suggestions included linguistics, the arts, infant observation, and ethology. The program grew, amply supported by the Academy members who answered our call for papers.
The crafting of the program went smoothly, guided by Vivian Mendelsohn, who made trips to Washington not only to find an