Philoctetes: The Journal of the Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination intends to provide a setting for the best of the interface between creative arts, science, and psychoanalysis, culled from the community—composed of novelists and philosophers, psychoanalysts and filmmakers, poets and neurologists interested in a multifaceted study of the imagination—which the Center has established around itself over the past few years.
The cross-pollination between the worlds of art and science in particular seems to be sorely lacking in much of our literature, and the journal aims to redress that. With increasing professional specialization, we run the risk of compartmentalizing the most highly trained and gifted within each discipline and of missing what each could bring to bear on the others' work. Psychoanalysis and neuroscience have sought to bridge this divide, and, with a focus on the imagination, the Center has brought artists from many fields to this discussion, both resurrecting an intellectual salon of sorts and creating a channel between the scientific and humanistic cultures.
With an original scientific article alongside essays about topics related to the imagination and excerpts from the conferences and roundtable discussions the center has hosted, with poetry, visual art, and a research digest summarizing recent scientific findings related to the study of the imagination, the journal aims to increasingly develop into a powerful distillation of the best of interdisciplinary thinking. The intent is to catalyze on ongoing approach to mental life and imagination from different but never mutually exclusive paradigms, abandoning a dichotomous way of thinking for an integrative look at the true conflicts and compatibilities between the different systems of thought—neuroscientific, psychoanalytic, and philosophical—that attempt to understand how we think and create.
Submissions:
Manuscripts should be submitted to info@philoctetes.org in MS Word. Submissions will be evaluated by peer review, with reviewers' comments sent to the corresponding author. Please place all author information on the last page of the manuscipt. Please note that only papers that have not been previously published elsewhere should be submitted. Please use the APA manual for style rules.
Subscription:
The first two issues of the journal were mailed to all of our members free of charge. Beginning with Volume II, those interested in receiving the journal must subscribe. To do so, please send your name and mailing address and enclose payment (checks should be made to The Philoctetes Center). Personal Rate: $26. Institutional Rate: $40.
Mail to:
Philoctetes Journal
247 E. 82nd St.
New York, NY 10028