It is a great pleasure to respond to Fernando Castrillón, the new editor of the European Journal of Psychoanalysis. Fernando stated that a journal is the “lifeblood for our practice and thinking” and a link between members and the institution to generate new ideas.
Two important points were proposed: a journal should maintain a certain intellectual rigor, has its own autonomy, it must stay open to new ideas and be heterodox, avoiding a celebrity cult. Second, psychoanalysis is a transgenerational method transmitted from one generation to another. Fernando’s ideas maintain a tension, with Freud- Lacan, Laplanche, Pontalis, Green, authors who believed in a transformational model of psychoanalytic thinking. In Fernando Castillón’s paper, he stresses the Importance in journals of intergenerational communication of ideas where the person writing is in communication with the previously written work, which is taken in, erased and reworked to make room for the expansion of new ideas to emerge and be brought current. It is a constant re-inscription of psychoanalytic thinking that keeps the method alive.
In addition to this intergenerational communication Fernando is talking about, in Critica, we are trying to enlarge and broaden the field to include multiple approaches, subjects such as anthropology and philosophy and creativity to expand how we are thinking, perceiving and experiencing a particular theme together. It is a multifaceted approach and one we believe, makes our Journal stand out from previous journals. When one reads an essay, alongside a painting, collage, photograph, poem, or even a piece of music, it adds to the breadth and depth of our experience.
-Critica Editorial Team
Critica would like to add two more visions for our Journal “A criterion for publication is saying something – about persons, process, structures, events – that is not being said elsewhere, but deserves to be “ (New Left Review, Jan /Fe 2021.) in our way of thinking is to open words that were never used or afraid to be used. But words are not the only way to reach the unconscious. It was Freud who mentioned many times that psychoanalysis could learn a great deal from poets, artists and philosophers. Inspired by Freud we are moving in creative areas exploring the many shades of the unconscious using poems, paintings, photos, music, collages, literature, philosophy and humanities. Furthermore, we are writing on culture, racism, whiteness, police brutality, and immigration, anti-Semitism, gender, sexuality, politics and following the emergent themes in psychoanalysis around the world.
In response to Fernando Castrillón’s assertions that a psychoanalytical journal must stay open to new ideas, we would like to expand “Crítica” as a place where perceptual relationships and thoughts intertwine in the dynamic movement of intimacy and opacity of the “Self “and “Other”. The presence of the “Other” leads the perceptions of the “Self “and allows for “reflection, elaboration, clarification and messiness”. It is a place that Merleau-Ponty calls a “Chiasmic exchange” a site where we can better try to understand each other.
It is a place of creativity aimed at the genuine and spontaneous expression in a shared cultural experience. We are interested in Politics, Culture, and the Arts.
We are eager to open a dialogue with our colleagues and community members about the future of psychoanalysis.
