Editorial

In a seminar celebrating the work of psychoanalytic historian and researcher Ernst Falzeder, given last summer in London, the opinion was put forward that the history of psychoanalysis was coming to an end. There were unlikely to be any new discoveries relating to Freud; most of the correspondence was now or soon to be published, and historians would do well to move into fresher areas. I see the situation quite differently. Psychoanalytic history may begin with Freud and his colleagues, or thereabouts, but that was simply the opening chapter. What has become increasingly fascinating, for historians and psychoanalysts alike, are the multiple sequels beyond Vienna - in the 1930s, the 1950s, the 1980s and now the 2000s - during which psychoanalysis has reached across various geographical and cultural boundaries, and embedded itself in many other fields, including modern psychology, philosophy, literature, politics and the social sciences and humanities more broadly.

The practices, theories and modes of enquiry initiated in the 1890s, and expanded and developed in the early decades of the twentieth century, have continued to be transformed, reconstituted, remembered, and of course forgotten, over the course of a century. The stories, sometimes real ‘page-turners’, remain intriguing in themselves, but also expose significant facets of the history of modern culture and society. One could go further and say they offer an unrivalled perspective on the complex and shifting experience of subjective and psychological life in the last 120 years, as the meaning of individuality has been fundamentally transfigured. I am excited to be taking over this editorial role from John Forrester, and along with it the task of facilitating original scholarship and critical reflection on the continuing course of psychoanalysis, in all its global significance and often curious particularities.