Introduction

I speak only for myself when I say there is something missing when all is clearly articulable in rational terms. Hence the quest for surrender and the mystical, so as to make possible a reencounter with the transitional world of semi-illusion, or of creative surrender.

EMMANUEL GHENT WAS THE GUIDING FORCE BEHIND THE CREATION AND coming into being of the Relational Track of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and a founding member of the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Mannie's motivation in founding the Relational Track was based on a strong need, shared by many faculty and candidates, to bring into dialogue contemporary Freudian, American interpersonal, British object relations, and self-psychology theories and developments coming out of the burgeoning field of mother-infant research. There was nothing eclectic in this vision, but rather an appreciation for the manifold quality and infinite potential for the exploration and understanding of what it means to be and to feel human. There was a characteristic respect, love, and appetite for the new, for openness to the unknown evidenced in a creative, playful, deeply appreciative responsivity that was experienced by all of us who knew him as supervisee, analysand, and colleague. Mannie abhorred the potential for rigidification or fetishism with regard to any important movement or paradigm, including the emergence and evolution of relational psychoanalysis. He strove constantly to examine and deepen the meaning of the term with a strong bias toward movement and flow, process over content, and the recognition and acceptance of the