Editor's Introduction

It is always tempting to try to gather papers into a single issue around a particular theme, as we did with our recent issue on “Character and Technique” (Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2008, Number 4). Editors and readers like such issues, but authors generally do not, because it means delaying some articles while others are rushed into production—that is, unless the papers are all invited manuscripts, which poses other challenges.

In recent months, a number of papers have been submitted to The Psychoanalytic Quarterly that focus on a literary figure or a piece of imaginative literature. From them we have selected nine articles that, following peer review, we feel to be exceptional. As a result, we are pleased to bring you another issue of submitted papers on a single theme, in this instance on “Psychoanalysis and Literature.”

Here you will find a two-part essay by Thomas Ogden on specific writings of Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges, in which Ogden explores their role in the creation of contemporary consciousness. Next, we have two articles by Martin Bergmann and Eugene Mahon, respectively, that take different approaches to the study of grief and mourning in Hamlet. Mahon examines specific details in the language of the play, and his article is complemented by two close linguistic studies: one by Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly on sibling rivalry in Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and the other by Patrick Mahony on irrationality in Sophocles' Antigone. We then have two articles on prominent twentieth-century American writers of fiction: Adele Tutter's study of Raymond Carver and his unusual relationship with his mentors, and Sybil Houlding's treatment of boundary violations in Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night. The selection of original articles concludes with a description of a Bionian group experience (and a reprise of Hamlet) by Walker Shields. A series of book reviews and abstracts rounds out the issue.

We hope you enjoy the selections we have made in this unusual collec