In the hundred-year history of the profession, psychoanalysts from Freud onward have relied on the best thinking from the spectrum of human activity to help shape theory and practice. But, remarkably, we have been much slower to catch on to practical uses of new developments, especially in information technology. However, psychoanalysis is beginning to actively participate in the digital age—notably via FreudNet and similar ventures on the World Wide Web.
FreudNet, the Web site of the Abraham A. Brill Library of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute—the first psychoanalytic presence on the Web—was launched in April 1995 at interport.net. At first just a collection of Under Construction signs (a familiar sight to frequent Web browsers), FreudNet now features programs and announcements of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, library hours and service information, scientific meeting papers, and indices of online text resources related to Freud, psychoanalysis, and its related disciplines. FreudNet will also be used to extend the constituencies of its outreach programs in the New York area, and it incorporates Web pages for its parent-child center and low-cost treatment center, helping to make them more accessible to New York residents.
Since January, FreudNet has fielded over four hundred requests for information from all over the world and has been visited by over twelve thousand users. These numbers easily outstrip those of the library, which is open to the public as an outreach service of the Institute. While it is impossible to guess what impact this virtual “trip” to a library dedicated to Freud's discipline will have on the visitors, the opportunity to reach such a wide audience is not one the psychoanalytic community should pass up.
FreudNet was demonstrated at the 39th International Psychoanalytic Association Congress in San Francisco in August 1995, which also highlighted other ways psychoanalysts can benefit from the Web. Conference-goers participated in a lively online discussion about Charles Brenner's 1994 paper, “The Mind as Conflict and Compromise Formation,” projected onto a twenty-seven-inch monitor. Along with several of the responses that were published with the original essay in the Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, the electronic forum featured E-mail and fax responses, including a contribution from Hanna Segal of London. This forum, done in cooperation with International Universities Press and the editors of the journal, demonstrates the enormous advantages of an electronic, interactive psychoanalytic literature to members of a field that relies heavily on its journals. The Brill Library is exploring new ways FreudNet can extend its services to the international psychoanalytic community while helping to draw that community closer together. One way is to develop Internet links to related resources on the World Wide Web. The American Psychoanalytic Association has developed an excellent Web site (), which provides a variety of information about psychoanalysis for the general public and its members, including free online access to the Jourlit and Bookrev databases. The American is also expected this year to issue a prototype of its CD-ROM project (see page two), featuring fully searchable electronic versions of the principal English-language psychoanalytic journals. Though this product will not be available online in the foreseeable future, it will be an indispensable resource for anyone engaged in psychoanalytic research and practice. And though there are currently no plans to do so, psychoanalysts can look forward to the day when Freud's writings will be available in electronic form. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and many other mental-health professional organizations are also in various stages of resource development, and it is not difficult to imagine a time when a psychoanalyst will be able to consult materials from many mental-health sources without leaving the office. Psychoanalysts are communing electronically outside the Web, as well, for example through The Psychoanalytic Connection, a dial-up service dedicated to psychoanalysis. In addition to providing E-mail and Internet access, the Connection is a clearinghouse for information and provides a unique forum for the exchange of ideas related to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. In recent months The Psychoanalytic Connection has seen valuable discussions on papers by Owen Renik and Arnold Richards, among others.
While there is a well-established constituency for electronic resources in psychoanalysis, there is also ample opportunity to widen it. The community of users has already expanded into New York educational centers. Gardner P. Dunnan, headmaster of the Dalton School, a world-class center for new learning technologies in secondary school education, observed, “Web sites such as FreudNet allow our own students to relate to the world of psychoanalytic psychology in ways they can see and interact with.”
The Abraham A. Brill Library holdings comprise over 40,000 books, periodicals, and reprints dealing with psychoanalysis and related fields.
The Brill Library is a potential source for reconnecting Freud with educators and students worldwide. By developing such resources and making them available on the Internet to areas that might otherwise lack access, the Brill Library hopes to contribute to a wider understanding of and greater interest in psychoanalysis as the discipline enters its new century.
Matthew von Unwerth is director of the Abraham A. Brill Library. John F. Crow is chair of the Library Committee and a training and supervising analyst at The New York Psychoanalytic Institute.