Introduction: The Editors

Over the past 20 years, our Conceptualization of the psychoanalytic process has changed profoundly, whereas to a large extent psychoanalytic writing has maintained a more or less familiar look. We have a new sensibility, the growth and elaboration of which remain trapped within an old form. Adapting our psychoanalytic discourse to create a space for the expression of this new sensibility represents a challenge that calls for increased degrees of creative freedom and experimentation.

The Editors are pleased to present the following papers as experiments in new forms of psychoanalytic writing. We begin with Muriel Dimen's trailblazing essay on perversions. Dr. Dimcn innovates by organizing her paper as a series of notes in an attempt to avoid the knowing stance associated with the traditional linear development of an argument. She refers, as the essay unfolds, to her own experience of anxiety in her writing in an effort to locate herself subjectively as the author—rather than presuming to write from an anonymous, objectively situated position. Annie Sweetnam similarly tries to integrate personal experience into psychoanalytic writing—specifically, into psychoanalytic case reporting. Her paper adds a new dimension to the traditional psychoanalytic case report by evoking in the reader an experience analogous to the experience of the analyst in her interaction with the patient. In seeking to evoke an experience, in addition to simply transmitting information, Dr. Sweetnam's case report bears a resemblance to poetry and other literary art forms. Alice A. Jones, psychoanalyst and poet, drawing on the dual sensibility she has cultivated in her rich and diverse career, comments on Sweetnam's enterprise.

Such bold efforts to be creative and original in psychoanalytic writing and thinking are essential if psychoanalysis is to keep renewing itself and finding new ways to illuminate and capture the complexities of human experience in language. We support these efforts, and we plan