Leila Lerner-Editor (1978-1989)

On March 5th, 1989, Leila Lerner resigned as Editor-in-Chief of The Psychoanalytic Review. Leila served as Editor from 1978-1988 and then as Editor-in-Chief from 1988-1989.

The debt that the present Editor, The Editorial Board of the Review, N.P.A.P., the parent organization of the Review, and our readership owe to Leila can not be adequately stated in a brief tribute. Her high standards of scholarship, commitment to lucid writing, editorial skills, and her dedication to the Review as a journal open to all perspectives within contemporary psychoanalysis can be seen in the quality of the issues that appeared under her Editorship.

We need only survey the range of the topics covered in the Review, while Leila steered its sometimes stormy helm, to appreciate the depth of her interests and the breadth of her knowledge. There are symposia on Theodor Reik and the Third Ear (Vol. 68, No. 4), Lacan and Psychoanalysis (Vol. 69, No. 2), Virginia Woolfs Centennial (Vol. 70, No. 1), Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology: The Work of Stolorow and Atwood (Vol. 73, No. 3), The Essentials of Psychoanalytic Cure (Vol. 75, No. 2), and The Question of Lay Analysis: Sixty Years Later (Vol. 75, No. 3).

Additionally during Leila's tenure, she developed “special issues” dealing with topics germane not only to Psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline, but to Psychoanalysis as an integral perspective and synthesizing theory of general social scientific thought. Examples of this are seen in Papers in Honor of Esther Menaker (Vol. 71, No. 1), Women and Individuation: Emerging Views (Vol. 69, No. 1), Toward a New Psychology of Men: Psychoanalytic and Social Perspectives (Vol. 73, No. 4), The Persistence of Myth (Vol. 75, No. 1), and Child Survivors of the Holocaust (Vol. 75, No. 4). Quite a legacy!

The hours Leila unselfishly dedicated to maintaining the Review as a journal of excellence are now free for her to pursue other interests and facets of her personality: teacher, supervisor, analyst, wife, and