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The editors of The Psychoanalytic Review are honored to dedicate this issue to Theodor Reik, on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. The essays in this issue have been selected because they relate to Reik's own tradition, and in these few pages I shall attempt to explore certain facets of this tradition.
Theodor Reik has long been identified with a particular psychoanalytic attitude which is often termed intuitive or empathic. Since Dr. Reik has, in Listening with the Third Ear, definitively explored the meaning and significance of these terms, we shall not go over this ground. However, in the following essay, “A Booth away from the House,” Reik has made explicit the particular methods he uses in a field that he himself has created, psychoanalytic archeology. In this field Dr. Reik attempts, by psychoanalytic methods, to reconstruct events in the dim prehistory of mankind.
Other contributors to this issue have provided essays which are clearly allied to Reik's themes. Thus, Joseph Katz writes on “The Joseph Dreams Anew,” and Jule Nydes presents a seminal essay on “The Paranoid-Masochistic Character.” If one were to ask what in these essays of former students is specifically attributable to Reik's influence, it would seem reasonable to focus on particular subject areas, such as biblical interpretation or the problem of unconscious guilt. It is certainly true that Reik has emphasized these subjects in much of his writing. However, I feel that Reik's influence is more