The Psychiatry and the Humanities volumes are published under the auspices of the Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities, the Washington School of Psychiatry. As its name indicates, the Forum's purpose is to promote active interchange between psychiatrists and psychologists on the one hand and scholars in the humanities on the other. A principal medium for this has been a series of year-long interdisciplinary seminars devoted to specific topics of mutual interest to the two groups. Each one culminates in a lecture and a workshop given by an expert on the year's topic. A book is then assembled that comprises the lecture as well as contributions from the participants in the seminar and from other experts.

This volume on Kierkegaard has as its stated goal a "confrontation between the thought of the Christian Kierkegaard and the atheist Freud" (p. xvii). It is not clear, however, to what degree the individual contributors share this goal with the editor. Since the