Prologue

In the first issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry the editors wrote, “We believe this to be a promising era of diversity and creative ferment in psychoanalysis….” The creative ferment they referred to evolved from an influx of ideas during the previous two decades that began to alter the theory and clinical practice of psychoanalysis from the models given to us by Freud and his analytic followers and subsequently elaborated by Hartmann in the United States, and Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Winnicott, and others in England. Notwithstanding the elegance and intricacy of the analytic models available in the forties and fifties, many analysts found significant deficiencies that made it difficult to bridge abstract theory to clinical practice.

The descriptions of clinical practice frequently presented in scientific forums and teaching situations were different from actual occurrences in the clinical setting because of the impossibility of describing clinical experience with the concepts and models that were available in the early sixties. Thus, the difference between description and performance became fertile ground for dissatisfaction, defensiveness, and idealization among psychoanalysts.

The psychoanalytic landscape began to alter during the sixties and seventies. Arlow and Brenner (1964) and Brenner (1979) elaborated the structural theory and emphasized the place of unconscious fantasy and depressive affects within the conceptualization of the working of the mind. Thus the unconscious fantasy provided a bridge between abstract theory and clinical