Dr. Margolis began the discussion of electronic texts by observing that there are many potential research and educational uses of electronic texts, which are just beginning to be explored. Our organization has been on the forefront of this exploration. Our library now has a page on the World Wide Web, which can be accessed via the Internet. The Board of Directors has recently provided funding to Dr. W. Grossman and Dr. J. Crow to build the first prototype of an electronic document in psychoanalysis. This document uses Dr. Grossman's paper, "Hierarchies, Boundaries, and Representation in a Freudian Model of Mental Organization", J.A.P.A., 1992, as an organizer to trace the development of Freud's models of the mental apparatus. This text will be available for viewing at the upcoming meeting of the International Psychoanalytic Association in San Francisco.
Dr. Grossman began his presentation with a brief introduction to the concepts and technology. He stressed that his goal was to focus on the usage of technologies such as hypertext and the World Wide Web as scholarly tools. He cited Theodor Nelson's 1960 definition of "hypertext" as follows: "By 'hypertext' I mean nonsequential writing text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways." Dr. Grossman noted that hypertext is somewhat like the novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortzar in which the author suggests several different orders for reading the chapters, the same events thus generating different stories. In that sense it also begins to sound like an analysis. Furthermore, it could be said that Freud described hypertext in 1895 in Studies on Hysteria in his description of the organization of memory. Fundamentally hypertext creates linkages among documents or parts of documents, so your document can be linked to anything else you want to link it to, whether it is in your computer, our library or a library in Rome, i.e. to anyone who has a page on the World Wide Web who has agreed to let you enter his document with a link that he is willing to create in his document. We are the first to create such a text using the psychoanalytic literature.
Dr. Grossman provided handouts illustrating: 1. SGML, the language into which a document must be coded in order to be constructed as hypertext. This is currently a laborious process. It is expected that soon this will be accomplished by word processing software, greatly facilitating the development and usage of hypertext documents. 2. The manner in which additional text may be accessed in hypertext. For example, quotations, footnotes and references are not necessary in a hypertext document because it is possible to link the relevant text and access it with the click of a button. There is thus an expansion and flexibility in comparison with footnotes. Other items which can also be linked in a hypertext document include other papers in which the same ideas are discussed and commentary on the paper. Hypertext can also be expanded with new sequences of reading. The use of the Internet allows literature to be further expanded, accessed and examined in a variety of new ways. Literature in other libraries can be connected to a particular document, making infinite expansion of linkages possible and permitting documents to be examined according to different ideas and pathways, and various ways of interpreting the same material can be compared.
Dr. Grossman described a hierarchy of potential psychoanalytic applications of this technology. Word usage could be traced over time and among authors, permitting the development of an expanded concordance. Word tracing would permit contextual study and the tracing of concepts with use. Tracing concepts would allow any historical development to be compared with current views and with ideas based on published clinical material. And finally a still more elaborate approach would allow for following the development of groups of concepts that are interrelated. For example, it would be possible to trace the way issues of authority, morality and masochism have evolved and were differently influenced by the development of structural theory, by the subsequent critiques based on research on child development, and then by Brenner's critique of the superego concept and of structural theory. Dr. Grossman emphasized that such applications await the further development of this technology. At this time scholars could be described as "playing" with the technology as they assess its potential.
Dr. Grossman then described how his current project evolved from his work tracing ideas in and related to Freud's writings, starting with Freud's work On Aphasia. Dr. Grossman has proposed that On Aphasia provides a model for Freud's subsequent ideas about the organization of the mind to an extent not previously recognized. For example, in his explanation of aphasia, Freud introduced ideas of representation and overdetermination to describe relations of the contents of systems that were joined to form first a hierarchical nervous system and then mental systems. Freud subsequently pictured the organization of memory in much the same way as he had the organization of speech. Since his 1992 paper Dr. Grossman has continued to collect material that seemed to document his hypothesis by showing parallel structures of theory that were repeated and integrated with other theories. Dr. Grossman's goal is to do something more complex than word searches and creating concept headings for searches. He aims to use psychoanalysis as an illustration of how ideas evolve. In particular, he aims to take some of the hierarchies described in his 1992 paper and to create a web which demonstrates that hierarchies are a feature of a great deal of Freud's work, that he uses different kinds of hierarchies and that they are interrelated themselves in a hierarchical manner. Creating a web which anyone can follow and see the passages stacked one against the other provides a very convincing demonstration. He suggested that hypertext lends itself to such a demonstration because it, like Freud's hierarchical models, is like the native structure of thinking. The hypertext is described as a web because it is not a chain; it is not linear. There is always a piece of any concept that belongs somewhere else, and that piece can be checked in this way. Dr. Grossman added that a web is used and built according to the logic of the user in organizing the material, and that it can be done in different ways by different users. The processes of putting documents into SGML will become progressively more sophisticated in ways that will also facilitate the ability to search and the complexity of the search.
Dr. Crow began his commentary on Dr. Grossman's presentation by reading the following quotation:
Let us not forget the value of this great system. It does not lie primarily in its extent or even in its efficiency. Its worth depends on the use that is made of it. For the first time in human history we have available to us the ability to communicate simultaneously with millions of our fellow men, and furnish entertainment, instruction and widening vision of national problems and national events. An obligation rests on us to see that it is devoted to real service and to develop the material that is transmitted into what is really deemed worthwhile.
That was Herbert Hoover in 1924 talking about radio. Dr. Crow suggested the analogy of a radio station is pertinent in a variety of ways, except that we have a radio station to which one can talk back. We are currently the only radio station in the field of psychoanalysis. What we have been playing with is how to put on programming that will be of interest to the rest of the world, and also how to develop internal programming that will facilitate our own educational and scholarly aims. It is in the development of the lines of logic in the programming that something is superimposed on the content. Thus this technology can provide something in addition to the availability of the "canon". For example, critics can be invited to introduce their commentary into the material. Dr. Crow provided a handout illustrating how this will be done using Dr. C. Brenner's paper, "The Mind as Conflict and Compromise Formation", originally published in the Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis in 1994. This paper and the discussions of it are being prepared for their introduction on FreudNet, the web site of the A. A. Brill Library. On-line readers will be invited to respond to the article thereby helping to create interactive discussion. What is considered worthwhile in the discussion can then be archived and/or edited and put back on-line for further commentary. Dr. Crow described how local programming, using restricted sites, can be developed around particular subjects. Anyone to whom we give permission can then obtain it with a phone call. For example, we may eventually give other libraries access to parts of our information system, for a fee. The challenge is how to control the availability of material and the nature of the associated discourse in such a way is to make it maximally useful. Dr. Crow also described his ideas for teaching the character course as an example of how a restricted site could be used to invite participants and former instructors to dial up and make comments.
The discussion of these presentations focused on several questions. One was distinguishing between the uses of this technology and the search and hypercard functions currently available on word processing programs. Another was the uses of local webs in contrast to the World Wide Web. Dr. Grossman provided an illustration of how an instructor might construct a web to supplement course material. This would permit the instructor's commentary to be added to the literature. Other instructors dealing with the same material could also construct webs. These webs could be linked which would allow students to move from one to the other. Such hypertext material could be distributed to students on floppy disks. However, Dr. Grossman predicted that within a few years disks will be unnecessary as such material will become available via modem. Another question raised for discussion was whether there was a hazard of the linkages used by the creator of a particular hypertext being established as "the" linkages. It was clarified that these non-linear linkages would merely reflect the thinking of that instructor and could be contrasted with that of other instructors; i.e., it would be no more than instructors do when they teach. The discussion concluded with a consensus that there is so much that is new and exciting occurring in this area that it would be desirable to have an update a year from now.
