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In the mid-80s the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies and the associated M.A. in Psychoanalytic Studies were launched at the University of Kent in England, and they flourished. Because of the demand, by 1990 the scope of psychoanalytic studies was enlarged by courses at 15 more British and Irish universities. In addition, two national research bodies were organized. To draw an analogy to a popular concept, a field was built and they came. This volume is about trying to define the game that is being played, who the players are, and what the rules are. Like the subject matter itself, it is without a clear focus.
The editors provide an introduction briefly tracing the evolution of psychoanalytic studies as a university department. They pose questions about the common foundations, aims, and objectives of university departments that have developed in different directions, influenced by different psychoanalytic schools of thought and different ideas about the need for a clinical component to this pedagogy. They see the field as still fluid, but with an urgent need to hold on to the basic issues that stimulated the foundation of psychoanalytic studies in the first place.
The 15 contributors to the book are all associated with the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Through their essays, they seek to illustrate the importance of university psychoanalytic studies allowing “psychoanalysis different interdisciplinary contexts in which to discover its potential to relate to current research, seemingly strange methodologies, and other perspectives on the human condition” (p. 5). The book is divided into two sections: Psychoanalysis and the Academic Disciplines, and Thinking Psychoanalytically.
In the lead essay, “The Future of Psychoanalytic Studies,” Michael Stanton, coeditor, Director of the Centre, and a Council