Editorial

One of the pleasant surprises of editing Psychoanalysis and History has been to receive contributions from such diverse and disparate quarters. Authors, and we can safely assume readers too, with an interest in our publication seem to come from a variety of academic and professional backgrounds. Consequently they have a wide range of views that reflect their understanding of the meaning not just of the word ‘history’ or of the word ‘psychoanalysis’, but also of the threeletter conjunction ‘and’ which, in Psychoanalysis and History, connects the two nouns while, at the same time, keeping them apart. It is the nature of that link to be intriguing and to stimulate interest and debate among our readers.

In combination with the international dimension of our venture, our challenge is also to preserve—indeed to encourage—such a diversity of orientations and opinions by reflecting their richness in the variety of articles we publish, as we hope a perusal of the content of this second issue of the journal should confirm. You will not be surprised therefore to find in this issue articles by American, German, French, British, Finnish and Italian analysts, historians, social scientists and philosophers.

At the same time we are also concerned that such a ‘liberal’ editorial policy towards what may constitute history, psychoanalysis and their connection(s) should never degenerate into the kind of over-eclectic attitude that, by blurring the focus of our project, could only end up diluting its significance. We are aware of the risks involved.

Eli Zaretsky, an American social researcher, identifies in his article the links between British social policies in the 1930s and 1940s, leading to the establishment of the welfare state, and the central role taken by the ‘mother’ as an internal object in the work of Melanie Klein and other object-relations psychoanalysts. Zaretsky's research, not unlike Homans' (see Psychoanalysis and History 1(1): 69-86) can be seen as an important step in th