The theme of this new issue of Sitegeist is ‘research’. This term points in several directions. On the one hand ‘research’ gestures towards the methodologies of the self-proclaimed evidence-based variants of psychotherapy with their marshalling of statistical data which would discriminate between successful and unsuccessful interventions into felt distress, and deploys common sense understandings of science and scientificity. On the other hand, we are involved in the expansion of modes of investigation and their objects, as psychoanalysis interrogates new or reconfigured psychic phenomena. But psychoanalysis always foregrounds two features of the investigating subject. Such a subject is never self-centred, self-transparent or secure and (or perhaps, because) such a subject comes into being, indeed never ceases from becoming, its vicissitudes are marked by its origins in the ‘researches’ of the child into the enigma of its own being.
So our ‘research’ issue raises some general reflexive questions about how the psychoanalytic subject can be understood in relation to science and its self-representations when the fundamental discovery of the unconscious undermines the epistemological verities of certain versions of science. These are ably laid out in as series of pieces by Jean Laplanche, which place Freud within a science understood through the work of Popper and Lakatos, a theme returned to in the interview conducted by Alberto Luchetti. Julie Walsh goes back to Freud's ‘Little Hans’ case study to discuss the relations of epistemology and epistemophilia. Kirsty Hall continues the reflection on science by looking at the work of Stephen Toulmin and by counterpointing the meanings of research in science and in Life. Philip Derbyshire looks at the expediency and difficulties of using psychoanalysis to legitimate particular cultures of sexuality. And finally Stephen Gee offers an approach to research that comes from another scene.
Sitegeist would like to draw readers' attention to the fact that Nicholas Ray's paper ‘Anthropo-Decentring: “Human” and “Animal” in the Work of Jean Laplanche’ in the last issue was inadvertently published in an edited version which the author feels did not accurately and coherently convey his arguments. Should readers be interested in seeing the original version of the essay please contact him at .
Our next two issues will be devoted to: ‘Religion’ in Spring 2011 and ‘Ecology and its Discontents’ in Autumn, 2011. Papers on both topics are welcome, and would-be contributors should consult the desiderata outlined in the Journal.