Prologue

This issue is intended to comprise and generate further dialogue about psychoanalytic theory and practice in this polyperspectival era that is inclusive of multiple analytic perspectives and allows for interdisciplinary interaction. Because in the current situation there still is no generally accepted common conceptual or technical ground between psychoanalytic perspectives, the concept of unconscious metaphoric processes was selected for this issue to explore whether it can serve the purpose. Every analytic perspective that agrees with the existence and influence of some form of unconscious processes is likely to be able to assent to a psychoanalytic conception of unconscious metaphoric process. With the use of this concept as basic, it was hoped, that conference and dialogue between the different analytic perspectives about psychoanalytic theory and practice will be possible without loss or confusion of meaning. It was further hoped that, ultimately, the result would be an expanded potential for the integration of concepts, principles, and techniques across analytic positions.

Such a project is of contemporary relevance and perhaps urgency. In the current climate of diminished status, recognition of, and educational outlets for, psychoanalytic thought and practice, together with other current global and clinical factors along with the lack of communication among the multiple branches of analytic theory and practice, it is unclear if there remains an integrated field of psychoanalysis. This situation is unacceptable if psychoanalysis, as a body of theory and as a clinical set of techniques for addressing issues in mental health, is to thrive. Over the past decades, there have been repeated calls to find a common ground and to open genuine discourse and understanding between the analytic perspectives.

Finding common ground among the different, and at some points mutually inconsistent, psychoanalytic perspectives could potentially lead to powerful theoretical a