From the Editors

Book Essay: Sigmund Freud–Martha Bernays Letters

Rita Teusch’s essay introduces the fourth in a planned five-volume collection of letters between Freud and his soon-to-be wife Martha Bernays, exchanged during the four years of their courtship. The entire collection—thus far available only in German—is edited by Gerhard Fichtner, Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, Albrecht Hirschmüller, and Wolfgang Kloft. Readers may also wish to see Teusch’s reviews of two earlier volumes in the collection (volume 2, in JAPA 62/2; volume 3, in JAPA 65/1) and Christian Maetzener’s review of volume 1 (JAPA 60/5). The correspondence in volume 4 is both passionate and historically complex. Through Freud’s exchange with Bernays, we glimpse the rising social and political tides of approaching war—“Traces of our complicated existence,” in Freud’s words. We also see a human, loving, and at times anxious young Freud, through the early development of his eminent career, and a strong, brilliant, empathic, and patient Bernays. We echo Teusch’s hope that these letters will soon be translated into English and made more widely available.

Revisiting Early Psychoanalysts

Elizabeth Fritsch offers a deep reading of The Klein Tradition: Lines of Development—Evolution of Theory and Practice over the Decades, a volume edited by Penelope Garvey and Kay Long, with a globe-spanning roster of contributors. Fritsch writes that Garvey and Long identify Klein’s conceptual outlining of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions as “perhaps the most outstanding of her achievements” (p. 15). Among Klein’s most valuable contributions to psychoanalysis, Garvey and Long also emphasize her development of play therapy with children. And as Klein’s “most important departure from Freud,” Fritsch writes, Garvey and Long cite “her view that drives are fundamentally object seeking, an insight with profound implications for theory and clinical work.”

Rosemary Balsam introduces the most recent work of Robert Kramer, The Birth of Relationship Therapy: Carl Rogers Meets Otto Rank. Balsam’s review brings into focus the breach of the oedipal tie between Freud and Rank, as well as the significant underlying contributions of Rank’s work to contemporary psychoanalysis. Balsam writes that in his book, Kramer, who has studied the correspondence of Freud and Rank, now revisits Rank’s influence on relational psychoanalysis, especially on the work of Carl Rogers. Balsam tells us, “Kramer suggests Rogers and Rank as seminal hidden contributors to the relational trends that shape much of contemporary psychoanalysis.” Rank has the stronger claim, she believes, “as he was steeped. . . in the field of psychoanalysis.”

Notes from the Present and Future

From retrospective views of our forebears, we turn to the works of contemporary authors who address questions at the forefront of our field. In his review of What the Face Reveals, edited by Erika Rosenberg and Paul Ekman, Nathan Szajnberg shows how the study of emotions—affective neuroscience—can deeply engage the psychoanalyst at work. For instance, Szajnberg asks, what can the clinician learn from the study of microexpressions about the perception of subtle or hidden human emotions such as “deceit,” in all of its conscious, unconscious, and preconscious meanings?

In keeping with this issue’s theme of gender and sexuality, Jason Wheeler Vega discusses Linda Brakel’s Investigations into the Trans Self and Moore’s Paradox. Early in the book, Wheeler notes, Brakel explains that from a philosophical perspective, an assertion like, “I am a girl, but I don’t believe that” is paradoxical, in that while both clauses may be true, their conjunction seems irrational. How might philosophers and psychoanalysts understand the paradoxical nature of a trans person’s sense of self? Brakel believes she may have a solution to this paradox. Brakel is both philosopher and psychoanalyst, and, writes Wheeler, she “adopts a multidimensional approach to transgender experience: conceptual, analogical, and quasi-empirical.” Brakel makes clear that she will not focus here on subjective aspects of trans experience. This strategy lends clarity to her inquiry, but, as Wheeler notes, it steers clear of another important question: “what might trans individuals want philosophical analysis, revisionary terminology, and comparative and empirical research to do for them?”

Steven Botticelli: Writing as Queer Practice and Pleasure

In a powerful essay, Steven Botticelli’s vivid writing evokes in the reader the very experience he describes as a writer—the capacity to find “the node of most urgent feeling in myself and then writ[e] into that place”—writing as a sensory pleasure, provoked by injury or trauma; as escape from the demands of relationship. “When things go well,” he tells us, “there emerges a feeling of having entered a writing zone, a flow experience of complete immersion.”