Preface

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Professor Benjamin Nelson, Special Projects Editor of this journal and one of its moving spirits during twenty-six years of publication. It is Ben who gave to The Psychoanalytic Review its broad humanistic scope that has made it unique among psychoanalytic journals. It is Ben who with his extraordinary sociological and historical scholarship gave vigor to a new kind of interdisciplinary study that has resulted in a rich flowering of psycho-cultural and psycho-historical works. Viewing psychoanalysis as a product of man's life in society, he explored, in an imaginative series of Special Issues, the interplay between psychoanalysis and current trends in the social sciences, philosophy, and the arts. In his obituary of Ben that appeared in the Winter Issue Murray Sherman observed that “Ben's ability to place psychoanalysis in a truly profound socio-historical perspective is unsurpassed by any contemporary contributor.”

This issue was to have been one of Ben Nelson's Special Projects. He had edited two papers on theoretical problems in psychoanalysis and had been zealously developing several other papers with authors when his untimely death, on September 17, 1977, abruptly put an end to his prolific activities. The two theoretical papers by Fred Weinstein and Bernard Elevitch represent Ben's work and his abiding interest in theory. Members of the Editorial Board have completed this issue, having selected articles that would reflect some of Ben's wide-ranging interests.

Since September there have been many tributes to Ben. Two of the most moving of these were delivered by two close friends at a memorial meeting for Ben held last November at The New School. Professors Morton White and Edmund Leites have kindly consented to have their remarks appear in the Review.