Preface

In preparing this, the second volume of Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science, the editors have adhered to the policy stated in the introduction to the first volume, which is to provide a forum for a variety of approaches to psychoanalysis. As analysts we want to communicate what we have learned in our own field, but we also want to learn from others. Hence the emphasis on interdisciplinary and integrative studies in the subtitle of the Annual. We do not, however, strive to be eclectic, at any rate not in the sense of trying to smooth over differences. If anything, we want differences to be expressed, forcefully and succinctly. In any science and, for that matter, in art and philosophy, premature closure may be detrimental. The one thing we are most afraid of is that our discipline may freeze into a new orthodoxy.

Obviously, we do not want to stress differences for their own sake nor to be different merely to be different. One does not have to be a very acute observer to know that the whole field of psychology and psychoanalysis is in ferment, partly because of the wave of irrationality that, as so often before, is sweeping our civilization, but partly also because in our field the standards of rationality, the sifting of evidence, and the methods of theory construction are extremely difficult to specify, let alone to apply. Because of the existing uncertainties it would be unwise to exclude on an a priori basis any scientific position that is clearly and logically expressed.

This volume is divided into eight sections, each representing a different viewpoint, method, or subdivision of the field. The first paper in the volume, “Is Psychoanalysis Relevant?” by the late George S. Klein, forms a section all by itself. It is a bold statement about the dispensability of theory in psychoanalysis which, the brilliant exposition notwithstanding, is bound to be controversial. The author no doubt has an important point, but it is possible to disagree with his conclusion. It is