CONTENTS
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Editing for Psychoanalysis Eve Golden, M.D. |
On Bibliography
If I had a dollar for every invective I’ve heard against reference lists (and for the ones I’ve muttered myself, when bibliographic carelessness tips me over the edge), I’d quit editing and publish a journal of my own called Psychoanalysis and Sedition. But I don’t. So here is Plan B: two studies of the form and function of the all-important reference apparatus. These could seduce a tabloid reporter into taking up bibliography-making as a hobby. Please note that this little reference list is carefully formatted in JAPA style…
Grafton, A. (1997). The Footnote: A Curious History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hoffman, H.H. (1978). Bibliography: Without Footnotes, 2nd edition. Newport Beach, CA: Headway Publications.
Zerby, C. (2002). The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Scholarly punctilio requires me to point out, however, that Jungian analyst Stephen Simmer* has a different take on all of this. Reference footnotes, says Simmer, "are a criminal record. In them we confess our guilt to crimes of theft, fraud, extortion and murder. We admit the poverty and dishonesty of our own insight; little or nothing of what we say really belongs to us. In footnotes we are revealed like a criminal in the stocks, with our crimes displayed below for all to see. 'I have pillaged the grave of Plato, I have stolen from Emerson, I have maimed and slaughtered Freud, and you can see for yourself how wretchedly I have wronged them.'"
No wonder we hate 'em.
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* Simmer, S. (1981). The academy of the Dead. Spring 41:89–106.
