Editor's Introduction

In recent years, there have been great changes in that corpus of knowledge that we refer to as “psychoanalytic.” Psychoanalytic theory now consists of multiple psychologies, including but not limited to drive theory, ego psychology, object relations theory and the psychology of the self. Retrospection and reconstruction have been augmented (and some might argue, replaced) by a developmental perspective that is illustrated in the pioneering work of researchers such as Daniel Stern, Robert Emde, and Stanley Greenspan in the field of infant development. Attunement, mutuality, resonance, real relationship, selfobject, and alliance are but a handful of terms that have been introduced into our lexicon since the relational psychologies began their ascendancy within the past two decades. There is an ever-widening clinical audience in this country for British object relations theory, as well as increasing interest in such “radical” ideas as those associated with the late French analyst Jacques Lacan. Although Lacan's theories were virtually unknown in this country as recently as twenty years ago, there is currently an American quarterly devoted to Lacanian thought, and nearly all of his major works have now been translated into English.

I attended a multidisciplinary professional conference a few years ago that was entitled “Recent Developments in Psychoanalytic