Co-Edited Journal Issue

Psychoanalysis sets itself apart from the rest of Western thought by its theoretical and clinical investment in the unfamiliar ––das Unheimlich–– as a key site of knowledge. In this light, the impact non-Western life practices and knowledge systems have had on psychoanalysis remains understudied. The substantial momentum of this issue arises from this gap as it tracks the traces left behind by psychoanalysis outside the West. However, the journey we wish to undertake is not from outside the West back to psychoanalysis; such an approach would return us to the scene of extraction of intellectual resources from around the world in the service of the West. Instead, we seek to reverse the direction of the flow of this inquiry to ask what psychoanalysis has to offer to peo- ple situated in spaces outside the Western world. We understand psy- choanalysis to be a practice that refuses to reduce what is Other to the familiar, and we also see it as an unheimlich practice endlessly undergo- ing transformations in its encounters and trajectories in the elsewhere.