The heated public controversy about Freud and psychoanalysis that has been raging in America for a number of years has meanwhile found its way into major German dailies as well (Frankfurter Rundschau 5.1.1996; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 11.1.1996; Die Tageszeitung 17.1.1996). Bohleber outlines the latest case of Freud-bashing in the United States, sparked off by plans for a Freud exhibition in Washington. Closer inspection of the motives and roots of the attacks on Freud lead to the hardly surprising conclusion that the popular parlour game "Freud Bashing" has crested the wave in a social climate marked by fundamentalist conservatism, the new prudishness, and a species of scientific puritanism born of blind belief in the "exact sciences". The main representative of this attitude in connection with psychoanalysis is Adolf Grünbaum, while "revisionists" like Jeffrey Masson and Frederick Crews are to be regarded rather as exponents of the sexual counter-revolution. Bohleber's article is intended as an introductory commentary on the following essay by Jonathan Lear.

The author examines the functions of child masturbation in the development of narcissim and distinguishes a demarcation function, a compensation function and a function serving to establish autonomy. In Binswanger's view, certain reactions to child masturbation on the part of parents may affect the interactive relationship between the child and the parent representing the primary object in such a way as to thwart or undermine these functions. The result is the appearance of masturbation substitutes in the form of certain symptoms. Binswanger distinguishes "horrified", "liberal", and "eroticized" reactions by parents, relating the first to compulsion neurosis, the second to obesity, and the third to anorexia/bulimia. The author illustrates his hypotheses with copious references to cases from his own practice.

In an attempt to answer the question, "what is affect?", this paper considers Freud's metapsychological formulation in the light of recent developments in psychoanalysis and neuroscience. It argues that the problem of affect-perhaps more than any other-forces us to acknowledge the intrinsic connexion between mind and body, and to accommodate it in our theoretical formulations. A review of the problem from this point of view leads to the following formulation: affect is a primary sensory modality, analogous to the senses of vision, hearing, somatic sensation, taste, and smell. These modalities are the elementary constituents of the envelope of consciousness, from which it is impossible to free ourselves. Whereas the sensory modalities of vision, hearing, somatic sensation, taste, and smell represent aspects of the external object world ("unknowable" in itself), affect is the primary sensory modality through which we perceive as aspect of the internal world of the subject ("unconscious" in itself).

Although the concept of "inner objects" developed by Melanie Klein is hardly a major object of discussion today, it caused a furore in the ranks of the British Psychoanalytical Society in the thirties and forties. Notably the analysts from Vienna were unable to agree to the existence of inner objects engendered via processes of internalisation. The author traces the course of these discussions of a clinical problem and the confusion they caused, placing them at the same time in a specific historical context. He sees the controversy as the expression of conflicts and fears unsettling the British Psychoanalytical Society during that period, caused on the one hand by the necessary integration of the exiled Freud family and on the other by tensions within its own ranks leading ultimately to a division of the Society and the constitution of the Klein Group.

Herzog sees trauma as the incursion of certain kinds of hyper- and hypo-stimulation on the child or adult, interrupting the capacity for play (play as the creative acquisition of reality) and occasioning a change in the mode of play. The upshot is interactive acting-out in the relationship, in which the pre-programmed participation of the partner is essential. The author draws upon the case history of a man of the "second generation" to demonstrate how failure on the part of the parents to work through a trauma of their own meant that it was passed on to the son and his relationship to his wife. The return of the parents' trauma manifested itself most clearly in the necessity felt by the son to organise his own sexuality in a particular way.

Expressly leaving aside the classical Freudian theory of instinctual drives, itself largely based on obsolete biological models, and drawing on Lichtenberg's theory of motivation, Gedo outlines a five-stage motivation model encompassing both pre-programmed biological patterns and those acquired via learning and experience. With reference to brief examples from clinical practice the author describes how human behaviour can derive from various motives, thus making it essential to go beyond Freud's theory of libido. To do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon, he introduces a hierarchical schema taking account of the interaction between various motivations, the ways in which they may conflict and ultimately the ways in which they may best be reconciled.

The perception process taking place in the mind of the analyst in the psycho-analytic situation is a constant oscillation between the temptation to be guided too much by theory and the dangers of trusting to feelings and intuition alone. In order to avoid the pitfalls of this Scylla and Charybdis situation and with a view to reconciling empathy and knowledge in such a way as to provide optimal access to the patient's unconscious, the author draws upon a model devised by W.R. Bion. The author claims that Bion's model, an intermedium between affect and cognition, achieves the integration of evenly suspended attention and theory-guided perception by taking account of patient's experiential objects while at the same time allowing scope for cognitive activity, a process which Bion calls "intervening phase" König then briefly recounts a case study illustrating the possibility of achieving interpretations that combine both empathy and knowledge.

The author tries to develop a comprehension of music based on a difference between the two systems of writing in music and language. Music offers no fixed connection between signifier and signification as they are brought about in language by sequences of letters. Therefore the name-of-the-father, whose recognition guarantees psychic stability, cannot be introduced into the discourse of music. The "Welltempered Piano" by Johann Sebastian Bach shows how the composer reacts to this dilemma: in a biographical and music-historical difficult situation, Bach, in a cryptographical way, interweaves his proper name with the score and thereby replaces the missing name-of-the-father.

Taking both a personal and a general perspective, the author sketches the socio-historical circumstances leading to the destruction of psychoanalysis in Germany between 1933 and 1945. In so doing he looks at the attitudes and responses evinced by those "Aryan" analysts who believed it to be possible to "rescue" psychoanalysis from Hitler's grasp without forfeiting any of its central convictions. Then Wangh takes Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich's pioneering work. The Inability to Mourn as a starting-point for a reconstruction of the revolt staged in the late seventies and early eighties by the younger generation against their analytic parents and their continuing silence about the past--a revolt that took place not least in the pages of this journal. Central to his remarks is a concern with the working-out of persistent feelings of shame and guilt and success (or failure) in the attempt to overcome and/or integrate them. Finally the author advances a suggestion as to how the emotional--and verbal--barriers between the descendants of the victims and those of the perpetrators could be removed.

In the years 1912 and 1913 there occured an epistolary encounter between the founder-father of psychoanalysis and the young Hans Bluher who had been active in the Wandervogel movement, a German youth movement with strong traditionalist and nationalist leanings. Their correspondence centered around the evaluation of male homosexuality, a point on which Freud and Bluher were not in entire agreement. In his introduction Neubauer outlines the intellectual nub of this debate and sketches Bluher's later career and his gradual transformation into a biologistically motivated anti-Semite completely and utterly disowned by Freud.

The ethic of psychoanalytic technique which goes back to Freud and emphasizes the importance of anonymity, abstinence, neutrality and the central role of interpretation is subjected to a critical examination. The author traces the changes that have taken place since Freud and proposes a new ethic of psychoanalytic technique. Proceeding from the theory of object relations, Treurniet stresses the symmetrical relationship between analyst and analysand permitting both to assume a "meta-position" in order to reflect on the analysis material. The author further suggests that, beyond the projections of the analysand, the analyst should be open to his own subjectivity, as this openness is the key to the essential feature of analytic procedure, the enactment of countertransference. Finally, Treurniet reformulates his advocacy of a non-intrusive, affirmative attitude on the part of the analyst, a spontaneous willingness to "fall into the analysand's trap", an ability to oscillate between acting-out and introspection, to live out countertransference involuntarily and finally to incorporate the non-ideal into his conscience. These rules of technique must be controlled not only by the conscience and the countertransference of the analyst, but also--apart from intervision and consultation with collegues--by the analysand himself, whose opinion of the analytic situation the analyst should ask for.

The authors show that the development of the affect system commences with affects of an exclusively communicative nature. These regulate the relationship between subject and object. On a different plane they also provide information on the feeling of self deriving from the interaction. Affect is seen throughout as a special kind of information. One section of the article is given over to intensity regulation and early affect defenses. The development of cognitive processes leads to the integration of affect systems and cognitive structures. In the pre-conceptual concretistic phase, fantasies change the object relation in such a way as to make unpleasant affects disappear. Only at a later stage do fantasies acquire the capacity to deal with affects. Ultimately, the affect system is grounded on an invariant relationship feeling. On a variety of different levels it displays the features typical of situation theory and the theory of the representational world, thus making it possible to entertain complex object relations. In this process the various planes of the affect system are retained and practised. Finally, the authors discuss the consequences of their remarks for the understanding of psychic disturbances and the therapies brought to bear on them.

In 1895 Breuer and Freud jointly published the Studies on Hysteria, a work that Grubrich-Simitis regards as the very first psychoanalytic monograph. The author begins by outlining the intellectual context in which the work took shape and the initial reception accorded to it by contemporary medical science and sexology. The main focus of the discussion centres around those aspects of the book that mark it out as a genuinely psychoanalytic work - hitherto unknown quality of seeing and hearing, a radical change in the relationship between doctor and patient, the establishment of a new form of case presentation and the development of approaches adumbrating psychoanalytic theory and technique. In conclusion the author describes the scientific cooperation between Freud and Breuer, assigning to the latter his rightful place in the history of psychoanalysis, a status frequently denied him by Freudians.

The general attitude towards Entwurf einer Psychologie (1895) is to reckon it among Freud's pre-analytic writings, i.e. that part of his work later more or less disowned by the author. Schmidt-Hellerau challenges this assessment by Freud and many of his successors, demonstrating that the Entwurf can legitimately be regarded as a meta-theory resolving - or skirting- the old classification problem of whether psychoanalysis is a science or an art by connecting the hitherto dissociated spheres of soma and psyche and conceptualizing of physiological and psychological processes. See thus, the Entwurf reveals itself as a theoretical document of astonishing modernity and undiminished relevance in that it records Freud's ambitious attempt to overcome the mind-body schism and the divide between neurophysiology and psychology. And it is precisely this problem, the author contends, which Freud's later metapsychology--and the controversies it has aroused--revolves around.

At the end of the 20th century Eissler looks back to its beginnings and the outside figure of Sigmund Freud. What good have Freud's discoveries done? What progress have they promised and which of those promises have actually been redeemed? What kind of track record does psychoanalysis have to show for itself? The author undertakes a careful assessment of Freud's stature, his limitations and his scientific achievements, and comes to the skeptical conclusion that in the last resort it was in fact the founder of psychoanalysis who destroyed the illusion he himself had long subscribed to, i.e. that there is an indissoluble link between the increase of scientific knowledge and the salvation of homo sapiens. For Eissler's Freud the survival of humanity and the scientific civilization created by mankind are irreconcilable.

On the basis of two brief case studies the author elucidates the difference between "classical" authoritarianism as described by Adorno et al and the "new" authoritarianism which she posits as indicating what might be termed a negatively extended stage of sociation. Whereas the classical authoritarian takes an external object as the locus for the formation of moral judgments and activates aggressive impulses via projections onto "foreigners" or "aliens", the communicative dimension of social action, a dimension profoundly characterised by narcissism and centring no longer around the super-ego but the unconscious self with a specific aggression potential of its own. In Brede's view extreme right-wing phraseology and violence may be a reaction to persons or groups whose common factor is the "new" authoritarianist syndrome.

In the author's view anxiety is a psychosomatic phenomenon that develops into neurotic anxiety when unconscious psychic components come into play. He regards it as impossible to make a clear-cut distinction between neurotic anxiety and real anxiety given that anxiety neuroses also display an element of historical and continuing actuality and can thus be said to have "real" foundations. In his discussion of treatment techniques, Thomä introduces following Weiss and Sampson the concept of "mastering" to refer to the necessity of understanding the repetitions and transferences of the patient as an attempt to master traumatic situations with the assistance of the analyst. In his view it is not sufficient to make the patient aware of libidinous and aggressive drives but rather to broaden the scope of action available to the patient.

Although hypochondria is one of the earliest psychic conditions to be described, its nosological status is still uncertain and it has been largely neglected in theories of psychosomatics and neurosis. The authors undertake a detailed review of the literature and examine the psychodynamic concepts and theoretical approaches to the hypochondria phenomenon, from Freud, Ferenczi and Levy, through Klein and the ego psychologists, object-relation theories and the psychology of the self, all the way up to the present day. The authors trace the differences between hypochondria and other body-related disturbances and indicate the consequences for diagnosis and therapy.

Adolescence is of cardinal importance for gender identity, a period of self-differentiation in which sexual identity is finally and fully established. The author proceeds from a somato-psychic relation model taking shape between mother and daughter at birth and based on unconscious projections on the part of the mother. The model centres around the contrast between the body as envelope and as (empty) cavity. In the course of adolescence, in which femininity, sexuality and motherhood are supposed to manifest themselves and unite in the female body, girls are faced with the difficult task of relinquishing the idea of their body as a cavity and identifying with the idea of physical containment. With reference to the case of a bulimic adolescent and more general remarks on anorexia, the author traces the difficulties encountered on the arduous path to the appropriation of femininity, which, if strayed from, can lead to the brink of death.

With a very few exceptions, the sparse psychoanalytic literature on menopause has regarded it almost exclusively as a kind of ailment, a process of decay and loss. By contrast, recent feminist discourse has demonstratively set itself apart from Freud's theory of femininity and emphasized the opportunities that the menopause brings, albeit at the expense of female sexual desire. Hettlage-Varjas and Kurz suggest that critical review of Freud's theories and more recent concepts of femininity can be integrated into psychoanalytical theory on the psychology of conflict and instinctual drives. They thus avoid the equally dangerous temptations either of classifying the female climateric as pathological or else denying the anxieties and sense of loss that involves and declaring it a conflict-free zone.

The author recounts the case of history of a woman patient seeking psychoanalytic treatment for a variety of extremely severe symptoms. In the course of treatment the original symptom constellation changed, revealing new facets but never disappearing completely. Discussing the compulsive, phobic symptomatology of the patient in terms of the traumatic sexual conflicts underlying them and the attendant break with outward reality and psychotic fabrication of a world of the patient's own making, Zeul warns against premature nosological classification. She contends that, in a case like the present one, the diagnosis of the disturbance into a neat set of nosological compartments--borderline/hysteria/psychosis etc.--makes little sense and should be supplanted by an attempt to describe the psychic mechanisms of mental illness.

Ethno-psychoanalysis is the study of the unconscious in foreign cultures. It can however also be of use in understanding unconscious elements operative in our own culture. To illustrate the point, the author describes the "Koro" epidemic which occurs periodically on the island of Hainan off the south of coast of China. This epidemic largely affects young unmarried men and the author pinpoints the unconscious conflicts underlying this collective phenomenon. It transpires that the epidemic is in effect a species of rite of passage in which a group of young males make the communal attempt to overcome castration anxieties which are themselves the product of covert gender envy. In the second section, Gerlach reports on his psychoanalytic encounter with a young man in Germany displaying similar symptoms. The profounder dimensions of this condition were only comprehensible to the author on account of his knowledge of "Koro".