The usefulness of psychoanalysis to other scientific fields was initially raised by Freud. Yet the question of whether psychoanalysis should rely on or might be enriched by other scientific disciplines began being addressedif sporadicallyonly as of the 1980s, and there has been little change in this situation since. Reducing this knowledge deficit was the essential motivation for the present volume. Representatives of the fields of medicine, philosophy, theology, psychology, education, sociology, literature and linguistics were invited to offer their experiences and thoughts on their encounters with psychoanalysis, whereas psychoanalysts were asked to reflect upon the potentials of these disciplines for themselves and for their field. A volume has thus emerged that both points psychoanalysis in new directions of cooperation with other sciences and allows novel perspectives to emerge in these other disciplines, perspectives which will be hard to renounce in the future.

Prof. em. Dr. phil. Helmwart Hierdeis ist Psychoanalytiker und war als Erziehungswissenschaftler an den Universitäten Bamberg, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Innsbruck und Bozen-Brixen tätig.