Editor's Introduction

Contemporary analysts find themselves challenged to make evaluations in a wide variety of clinical and administrative contexts. Evaluations, for example, must somehow be made of: the accuracy of interpretations; the progress of patients; the results of analysis; the suitability of patients for analytic treatment; the admissibility of applicants for psychoanalytic training; the clinical competence of graduate analysts wishing formal certification—to cite but a few contexts. Such evaluations are particularly difficult in psychoanalysis, a field where universal agreement on basic concepts has yet to be achieved. For instance, how can we evaluate analytic process if we can't agree what it is? To such a question most analysts would answer pragmatically: we do the best we possibly can with the tools we currently possess while continually working to refine our concepts and our methods.

In this first of many issues to focus on this important problem, we are pleased to present a study by our colleagues from the Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute, Drs. Lagerlöf and Sigrell, in which they examine the results of their method of selecting patients for supervised analysis. The paper is capably discussed by workers in this field, Drs. Henry Bachrach, Ruth Karush, and Arnold Rothstein. The discussants are then responded to by Drs. Lagerlöf and Sigrell.

In the second part of our issue on Evaluations, we present a Symposium on the usefulness of the character concept in defining and assessing the degree to which a patient has changed in analysis. Participating in this Symposium are the distinguished analysts Drs. Milton Horowitz, Norman Margolis, David Milrod, and Stephen Rittenberg. We are grateful to Dr. Francis D. Baudry for organizing and chairing this Symposium.

At the end of this issue are to be found two clinical case studies which continue our tradition of including papers from a variety of