Prologue

This issue is composed of articles in honor of and inspired by the 1989 volume Psychoanalysis and Motivation by Joseph Lichtenberg, a singularly important study for all of psychoanalysis and arguably Lichtenberg's most creative and comprehensive contribution to date. As Friedman writes in this issue, “Psychoanalysis and Motivation is a book for prolonged study not simply because it leaves scarcely any aspect of psychoanalysis untouched but because it does not settle for that breathtaking accomplishment.” Friedman goes on to state that rather than introducing in a general fashion his theory of motivational systems, Lichtenberg has contemplated “the details and difficulties … with a subtlety that is usually left to second- and third-generation students who have benefited from a long history of discussion and debate.” Although not all of the contributors to this issue share Friedman's most laudatory assessment, at the least each of them finds in this book a stimulus for thinking and rethinking psychoanalytic views on human motivation. And as issue editors, we can say that Lichtenberg's contribution is a tour de force of integration, both of the many theories of psychoanalysis extant in our pluralistic world and of correlated discoveries from related disciplines, most notably infant and toddler observation and experimentation and neurophysiological findings. In fact, the last chapter in Lichtenberg's volume, written by the neurophysiologist June Hadley, is a specific attempt to elucidate and correlate the neurophysiological underpinnings to the motivational systems proposed by Lichtenberg.

The first article in this issue, written by James L. Fosshage, articulates Lichtenberg's theory clearly. Fosshage presents his own assessment of Lichtenberg's overall schema, focusing on what he considers to be the most important clinical implications to be derived from it. Among the many thoughtful and pertinent observations Fosshage makes here, we mention only two in preview.