Editor's Introduction

The Editors have chosen articles for this issue of Modern Psychoanalysis which demonstrate the application of psychoanalytic principles to disciplines other than a therapeutic analysis of patients.

Freud introduced the concept of wider application in The Interpretation of Dreams by an analysis of the characters of Hamlet and Oedipus. Freud's discovery of the fictitious nature of his patients' childhood memories freed him from a narrow dependence on fact. Distinctions, then between fact and fantasy blurred, and works of art—literature, painting, and sculpture—became vehicles for exploration of psychoanalytic, if not factual, truth.

In defending what was then called “lay” analysis in 1926, Freud emphasized that analysts need not come from scientific or medical backgrounds, and that they need not limit the application of their theory to patients, the mind of the artist or their work. He stated that analysts with backgrounds in virtually any field can be trained and psychoanalytic theory applied to a wide variety of endeavors.

As that idea has come to be increasingly accepted in this country, we reap the benefit of the creative thinking of more individuals from more diversified backgrounds. The willingness of analysts to apply their analytic tools to the other disciplines and professions has given us an understanding of these fields previously not available. It is the enthusiasm with which this marriage has been made that enables us to produce this issue.