Editors' Introduction

This issue (2003:2) arrives shortly after the publication of the 2002:1, 2002:2, and 2003:1 issues. It keeps our Journal on the publishing schedule that we wish to maintain: at the middle and end of each year.

The Target Article, by Vesa Talvitie and Juhani Ihanus, addresses and directly confronts John Searle’s critique of Freud’s ideas about unconscious mental processes. The paper is followed by a set of commentaries that have in turn been responded to by Talvitie and Ihanus.

This issue also contains four Original Articles, three of which focus on the false-belief states of confabulation and dreaming. The final article—a remarkable piece of detective work—focuses on a fascinating issue in the history of neuro-psychoanalysis: the authorship of a dictionary article on aphasia, assumed to have been written by Freud and predating his 1891 book On Aphasia, that has long been considered influential in the early development of psychoanalysis.

Readers may also be interested to note that in this issue we have an extended, and timely, Book Review section. The section is entirely dedicated to Antonio Damasio’s latest book, Looking for Spinoza, in which Damasio fleshes out the philosophical underpinnings of his ideas on emotion and the body. The book is reviewed from a neuroscience perspective by Jaak Panksepp and Douglas Watt, and also by a Spinoza scholar, Heidi Ravven. Having dedicated her professional career to Spinoza’s work, Ravven informs us that “the discovery of scientific data that appeared to confirm . . . the account of the emotions upon which Spinoza based his theory of ethics was like finding the Holy Grail” (p. 219). This charming episode suggests that interdisciplinary epiphany can be experienced as much by neuro-philosophy as by neuro-psychoanalysis. We are pleased to be able to publish Damasio’s responses to both reviews

As ever, the 2003:2 issue ends with the usual departments of Research Digest and International Bulletin. In the Bulletin, Iréne Matthis welcom