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Hyman Spotnitz died on April 18, 2008, just short of the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth. This is the first issue in the history of this journal in which his name does not appear as a member of the board of consultants. The term modern psychoanalysis for the body of theory this publication was founded to explore and develop was Spotnitz's term; he titled the definitive statement of his theory of technique Modern Psychoanalysis of the Schizophrenic Patient. He published that book in 1969, nearly 30 years into his work toward the development of what must by now be termed a school of thought, providing as it does the intellectual foundation of this journal and several professional training centers and academic institutions.
The loss over the last three years of our primary sources of inspiration—not only Spotnitz, but the founding editor of this journal, Phyllis W. Meadow, in 2005—prompts us to undertake to consolidate our intellectual resources as we press on. In assembling this issue we came to ask ourselves some interesting questions, among them: What are the intellectual origins of modern psychoanalysis? Will an answer to that question help us to determine the place of modern psychoanalysis in the larger discipline? and Shall we be concerned with placing ourselves in that framework today? These concerns are secondary to the clinical questions this journal is charged with exploring, but they are not insignificant to our practice with patients, and we believe they have been and will continue to be worth our attention.
The first articles of this issue, examining the earliest developmental stages of our theory and practice in Spotnitz's work, give a sense of how his thinking and practice underwent a process of maturation, contributing