Editorial

Over one year ago, dear readers, we invited you to let us know about your current research projects. On that occasion we expressed the wish that Psychoanalysis and History could become, among other things, ‘a forum for the exchange of information and discussion’ (Editorial, Vol. 1(2), 1999, p. 135) concerning your ongoing work in this field. Our journal, we are pleased to say, has been stirring an encouraging amount of interest and even excitement among its readership. However, we have so far received from you not one single letter, fax or e-mail with the kind of information we assumed you would have been keen to circulate. We feel not so much disappointed as puzzled about it. We believe that scholars around the world are engaged in research, spend their days in libraries and archives or on obscure websites, photocopy letters, borrow documents, read and write articles and books, give or receive grants for research, publish or hope to publish (perhaps on these very pages…) the results of their work. There is, in other words—and one can only be delighted about it—a whole flurry taking place in our field. And yet the lack of response to our invitation seems to suggest that nobody wants others to know about it. Are we then misinformed about the existence of these activities? Are we naive in assuming that those engaged in such intellectual endeavours would gratefully welcome ideas, cooperation, critical comments, helpful advice from their colleagues? Or are we underestimating our colleagues' fear, or paranoia, that the precious offspring of their labour, if anyone were made aware of its existence, would be damaged or kidnapped even before it could see the light of day?

Well, our offer is still open…

In this second issue of the new millennium we are pleased to reproduce under the heading of our ‘Documents’ section copies of three letters Freud wrote to Roy R. Grinker Sr in 1933. Malcolm Pines and Jerome Kavka, the archivist of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute who has ki