“The smartest new journal on the academic scene may actually be the oldest,” writes Diana Fuss of Princeton University about American Imago under the editorship of Peter L. Rudnytsky and his team of co-editors, Louise J. Kaplan and myself.
Every psychoanalyst has surely heard of American Imago. Not many, however, may realize that, as the successor to the original Imago: A Journal for the Application of Psychoanalysis to the Human Sciences, founded by Freud in 1912, with Otto Rank and Hanns Sachs as its editors, it can claim to have the longest tradition of any psychoanalytic journal. The first American journal, The Psychoanalytic Review, was founded in 1913, the same year as The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, established in 1932, was second in this country.
Both Sachs, who was by profession a lawyer, and Rank were among the first lay analysts. In 1932, Sachs came to the United States to be a training analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society. When the Nazis occupied Vienna in 1938, Freud consented to Sachs's request to continue Imago under the name American Imago. Freud was to have served as its honorary editor, but did not live to see the inaugural issue.
Sachs declared in his preface:
The American Imago lost its editor before the publication of its first issue. We cannot look out for another one to replace him … Our aim can be no other than to keep the flame alive which he lighted and to try, as best we can, to continue in his spirit the science which he has founded and developed.
As indicated by its subtitle, the special provenance of Imago has always been what Freud, in The Question of Lay Analysis, called those “branches of knowledge … which the doctor does not come across in his practice: the history of civilization, mythology, the psychology of religion, and the science of literature.” While preserving this emphasis at American Imago, today we are eager to integrate clinical perspectives, in the belief that it is no longer possible or desirable to distinguish sharply between “pure” and “applied” analysis.
Since its inception, the journal has had only five editors. Sachs remained in the post until 1946, the year before his death. He was followed by George Wilbur, who served until 1963. Wilbur, a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, had been analyzed by Rank After Rank's break with Freud, Wilbur was forced to resign from the Boston Society so that it could join the American Psychoanalytic Association, but he was readmitted in 1936. Harry Slochower, who during the McCarthy era successfully fought before the Supreme Court his politically motivated firing by Brooklyn College, presided over the journal for a quarter-century. In 1990, his successor, Martin J. Gliserman, brought American Imago to The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Under its first three editors, the journal published classic papers by, among others, Siegfried and Suzanne Bernfeld, Edmund Bergler, Mark Kanzer, Richard Sterba, Géza Róheim, Theodore Reik, A. Bronson Feldman, George Devereux, and Martin Grotjahn. During Gliserman's tenure, it expanded its focus to encompass new trends in gender, film, and cultural studies, featuring such luminaries as Jacques Derrida, Harold Bloom, Shoshana Felman, Sander L. Gilman, and Slavoj Zijek.
Now, building on its illustrious history, American Imago seeks to reintroduce itself to members of the American Psychoanalytic Association as the preeminent scholarly journal of psychoanalysis and the place where the academic and clinical worlds intersect. Rudnytsky, who took over in 2001, is professor of English at the University of Florida. He received the 2003 Gradiva Award for his book Reading Psychoanalysis: Freud, Rank, Ferenczi, Groddeck (Cornell University Press) and, in 2004, will be the Fulbright/Freud Society Visiting Scholar of Psychoanalysis in Vienna.
Vera J. Camden, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Kent State University and a psychoanalyst in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio. A member of the Committee on Research and Special Training of the American Psychoanalytic Association, she is the founding chair of the annual CORST Essay Prize competition.
The current editors have brought new members onto the editorial board including Robert S. Wallerstein, Peter Loewenberg, Arnold D. Richards, Sander L. Gilman, Rosemary H. Balsam, George J. Makari, Patrick J. Mahony, John Kerr, Judith E. Vida, and Robert A. Paul. They join Maynard Solomon, Adrienne Harris, Ellen Handler Spitz, Joel Whitebook, Bennett Simon, Alan Bass, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Laurie J. Wilson, and Donald Moss, among others.
Each issue has a thematic focus; the Fall issue has been designated annually as a special issue, with a guest editor I served as editor of the Fall 2003 issue on “Early Women Analysts,” which includes contributions by Madelon Sprengnether, Mary Bergstein, Rosemary Balsam, Nellie L. Thompson, and Judith Vida. The historical focus of this issue demonstrates how much of what is seemingly new in the study of psychoanalysis and gender has been anticipated and advanced by Freud and his cohort of pioneer women analysts.
Rudnytsky has also introduced a book review section to the journal.
Reflecting its dual mission as a scholarly and analytic journal, American Imago belongs to both the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, affiliated with the Modern Language Association of America, and the Council of Editors of Psychoanalytic Journals, chaired by Joseph Reppen.
Together with Literature and Medicine, also published by Johns Hopkins, American Imago is sponsoring a conference on “Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine,” to be held February 19-22, 2004, at the University of Florida. The conference is made possible by the generosity of the Thomas H. Maren Foundation. The featured speakers are Jeffrey Berman, Rita Charon, Jody Messier Davies, Lynn Gamwell, Sander L. Gilman, Geoffrey H. Hartman, Norman Holland, David B. Morris, Bennett Simon, and Frans de Waal. There will be a special exhibition, “The Private Life of Sigmund Freud: Photographs of Edmund Engelman,” at the Harn Museum of Art. Papers are invited on all aspects of psychoanalysis, literature, and the arts and sciences of healing. For further information, please visit the conference website at .
Proud as we are of our past at American Imago, we look forward with equal excitement and optimism to the future. We welcome submissions on any topic from candidates, graduate students, or training analysts and senior professors. Papers may be sent as e-mail attachments to the editors at .
Published quarterly and costing only $36.00 per year for individuals, American Imago is not only the most venerable but also, we believe, the most innovative and the best bargain among analytic journals. We hope to find you in its pages!