Editors' Introduction

Since inaugurating our clinical journal, with its experience-near, down-to-earth, relatively informal orientation, the editors have received a steady stream of contributions which, though not formally publishable, nevertheless often contained stimulating ideas submitted in our spirit of creativity. To accommodate some of this interesting material we developed “The Analyst's Notepad” section, in which we hoped to feature nascent ideas that had not yet been fully elaborated for more formal presentation. In this issue, we have expanded the Notepad concept even further to include frankly speculative suggestions, aphoristic musings, autobiographically derived material, and a special section which opens up for inspection our own editorial processes.

The latter section leads off our Notepad Potpourri. Dr. Andrew Smolar, one of our (relatively) younger contributors, submitted a manuscript that in our opinion needed revision. The ensuing correspondence developed into an intergenerational debate on the definition and limits of psychoanalytic technique. As this debate evolved, the issues seemed of such contemporary relevance as to warrant full publication, with an invitation to the readers to continue the discussion.

Next, we are pleased to offer two papers by Dr. Gilbert J. Rose, who will be recognized by our readers as a distinguished author and contributor to the field of psychoanalysis and the arts. These papers, written in an autobiographical mode, will form chapters of a forthcoming book by Dr. Rose in which he offers his original perspectives on psychoanalytic matters. In the first paper, Dr. Rose discusses the role of affects and interaction in psychoanalytic technique. In his second, no less controversial chapter, Dr. Rose describes some of his experiences with psychoanalytic training as it was conducted in previous eras. Here we encounter a point of view that is foreign to us, but which we recognize will be familiar to many, and which we will, perhaps subjectively, cha