While research can only be done by individuals, the Committee on Indexing serves as a valuable clearinghouse for ideas, a forum for discussion, and a catalyst for indexing research. We have tried to minimize the individual isolation, and to bridge the time between national meetings, by establishing geographic subcommittees that meet regularly and work cooperatively through the year. Our activities range from the production of practical aids for students to the exploration of new research approaches in psychoanalysis.
To achieve these aims, committee members have compared and evaluated existing psychoanalytic indexes, a report of which will appear in the Journal of the APsaA early in 1975. Included in the study will be the indexes of Alexander Grinstein, The Chicago Institute Library, Henry Harper Hart, the thirty-five year Cumulative Index of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, the twenty year cumulative index of The Journal, the cumulative index (vol. 24) of the Standard Edition, and the cumulative index of the Gesamtregister (vol. 18), of the Gesammelte Werke.
We have also prepared cumulative indexes including a computer-compiled cumulative index of The Standard Edition, available to psychoanalytic libraries since 1970; a twenty year cumulative index of The Journal (JAPA-20), now in preparation; and a pagination converter comparing the Standard Edition and the Gesammelte Werke.
Improved methods have been developed for indexing psychoanalytic literature. For example an index frequently lists over fifty page references under a single heading. The user of JAPA-20 will be able to screen such references with a companion volume of reverse-index “abstracts.”
The selection of terms and cross references in an alphabetical index tends to be the intuitive or idiosyncratic unless there is a thesaurus for the subject under consideration. At the December meetings, the Chicago indexing research subcommittee's non-tendentious, non-idiosyncratic thesaurus of psychoanalytic terms and concepts will be reported. This research has the long-range goal of indexing Freud's writings according to his concepts and the interrelationships among these concepts. Such an approach aims to obviate many of the present difficulties arising from the necessity of using an inadequate alphabetical word list to find information about analytic concepts, which presents different indexing problems, rather than the concrete or discrete facts that are the concern of many other sciences.
Psychoanalytic indexes themselves may be a previously unused valuable source of information for certain
types of psychoanalytic research. For example, the theme of the forthcoming International Congress in London is “Changes in Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice.” It is conceivable that these changes will be optimally reflected in the data from psychoanalytic indexes that have been placed on magnetic computer tapes. This idea has been tested, and the results of this study will be reported in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. In another area, Indexing Committee materials were recently used in a pilot study seeking new approaches to the evaluation of psychoanalytic curricula.
Three subcommittees of members from New York are studying other indexing problems and procedures. One group is studying the problems of retrieving information from tape-recorded clinical data. Another is developing additional procedures for indexing by concepts rather than alphabetically by words. The third New York group is exploring the possibilities of preparing a concordance of Freud's writings.
The present problems facing the Committee on Indexing result either from a shortage of workers or money. The highly specialized, non-clinical nature of the research on psychoanalytic indexes and indexing only interests a small segment of our membership. The Chairman of the Committee on Indexing would like to hear from anyone who might have an interest in and talent for doing research on psychoanalytic indexes and indexing. Such interest can be put to good use!
The solution to the money problems will depend ultimately upon the interest of members of our own Association in developing better indexing of our literature. Even though the procedures we are developing may ultimately be of value to other scientific disciplines, the only available source of financial support for this type of research has come from other psychoanalysts. Apparently, foundations and other sources of research funds consider psychoanalytic indexes of value primarily to our own profession. In the meantime, our work goes forward.
The second workshop on oral history was held on December 12, 1974. After an introduction by Dr. Arcangelo D'A more, Chairman of the Committee on History and Archives, Dr. Sandor Lorand (right) showed and discussed his film taken at The International Psycho-Analytical Congress of 1929 in Oxford, England. Dr. Lorand also spoke about the 1918 Congress in Budapest which he attended as a medical student.
In the photograph (left) are Drs. Richard F. Sterba and Editha Sterba who spoke on Psychoanalysis in Vienna, 1918-1939. They are looking at two documents: one, a rare original announcement of the opening of his office at Berggasse 19 in September 1891 by Sigmund Freud; the other, a certificate signed by Freud in August 1927 as President of The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society attesting to Dr. Sterba's completion of training in the Society's training institute.