Celebrating Eighty Years of American Imago

Early last year, Anton Kris initiated a discussion between my predecessor, Louis Rose, and me about bringing American Imago back to its original American home in Boston. Hanns Sachs and Sigmund Freud had agreed in 1939 that the European Imago, begun in 1912, could find refuge from Nazi persecution here. I became the journal’s seventh editor in anticipation of American Imago’s eightieth anniversary, which arrives with this issue. Eighty years of continuous publication is certainly cause for celebration, though we had not anticipated the ominous similarities between the present conditions in the United States—the rising tide of authoritarian cruelties and racial conflict—and the conditions which prompted the journal’s migration.

That American Imago has maintained its identity as a journal of “Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences” through many turbulent times underscores the dedication and responsibility of its contributors, its editors, and its readers. I am especially grateful to our Associate Editors, our Editorial Board, our Advisory Committee at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and our tireless managing editor, Melissa Skepko. The Johns Hopkins University Press and Project MUSE have continued to provide the best possible support and encouragement for a scholarly publication dedicated to global dialogues between psychoanalysis and the arts and sciences.

Throughout these eighty years, American Imago has remained true to Freud’s ideal of psychoanalytic education in The Question of Lay Analysis (1926), which he hoped would encompass “the history of civilization, mythology, the psychology of religion and the science of literature.” The journal’s first American volume in 1939–40 contained a fascinating multi-disciplinary array of papers, many written by prominent psychoanalysts of the time, including Hanns Sachs on Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure,” Ernest Jones’ “Funeral Oration” for Freud, Otto Fenichel on “Psychoanalysis and Antisemitism,” Géza Roheim on “The Dragon and the Hero,” Paul Federn on “Psychoanalysis as a Therapy of Society,” as well as reflections on the Pomo Indians, Mickey Mouse, Ferdinand the Bull, Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, and Herman Melville. Doris Webster, the only woman contributor, wrote on “The Origins of the Signs of the Zodiac.” Though some papers contain symptoms of historical prejudice—non-Western people are still called “primitives”—and they display a general adherence only to drive theory and ego psychological thought, the inaugural issues can be seen to exemplify American Imago’s open-minded curiosity, international reach, and the belief that psychoanalytic concepts can and should illuminate the myriad facets of human experience.

As we celebrate American Imago’s eightieth year, much has changed profoundly in psychoanalysis and the world. Our authors now make use of psychoanalytic concepts from various schools of theory and elaborate on the ideas of many leading analysts. The journal’s purview has also expanded. A partial list would include papers on the history and philosophy of psychoanalysis as well as papers about film, photography, television, painting, architecture, music, and multi-media works. Post-colonial studies, trauma studies, and the intergenerational transmission of experience also regularly appear in these pages. Advances in technology make color images and video links available for print and online readers. Yet the core mission remains constant: to bring the special perspectives of psychoanalysis to bear on creative works and to explore how critical issues, both consciously and unconsciously, affect the psychic lives of individuals and groups.

One of these critical issues is racism. In April 2018, the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute devoted its Annual Solange Skinner Conference to “Race, Racism, and Emancipation: Can We See Ourselves as We Are?” The speakers addressed James Baldwin’s letter to his fifteen-year-old nephew, published in 1962 as “My Dungeon Shook.” American Imago is honored to publish the results of this symposium, with the important addition of a paper by Dorothy Evans Holmes, as part of our eightieth anniversary issue. We are also pleased to continue the tradition of publishing the awarded-winning paper of the Silberger Prize at BPSI. This year’s winner is Scott C. Taylor’s exploration of the influence of psychoanalysis on Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), and his respondent...