Prologue: Freedom and Free Will

Across epochs of humanity’s self-reflection, two profound and interwoven themes have captivated the minds of philosophers, psychoanalysts, neuroscientists, theologians, and other thinkers: freedom and free will. In Western intellectual history dating back to the ancient Greek philosophers, the question of individual and collective human agency – and its freedom, constraints, lack, authenticity – has commanded a central position in the human person’s inquiry into the nature of his existence. Is there freedom, or a degree of freedom, however finite, in one’s otherwise highly determined situatedness in the world? Does one’s thrownness into this world preclude freedom and acts of free will?

Among the multitude of perspectives, we find a range, broadly speaking, from ones wherein the person is inherently free and self-determining to those wherein she is singularly a biochemical puppet fated by forces beyond her control. Some thinkers contend that determinism and free will are compatible, and can coexist, whereas others believe they are incompatible. And certainly, a finding that we have any liberty and freedom of choice is necessarily accompanied by a responsibility for our intentions, actions, and their outcomes.

As psychoanalytic theorists and clinicians in our own rights, we feel interdisciplinary psychoanalytic engagement with the topic of freedom and free will is essential in advancing our field’s sensibility about the place of freedom in psychoanalytic theorizing and practice, including specifically what freedom, if any, we envision for, and expect from, our patients – especially those who have been seriously traumatized – as collaborators in their psychoanalytic treatments.

As existential thinkers, and more broadly interdisciplinarians, we feel such psychoanalytic engagement may enrich philosophical, as well as other humanities’, understandings of the place of freedom and free will in what it means to be a human being. As such, we also hope this edition embodies the