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, too, 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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*I am working on a reference style sheet for JAPA authors, which will clarify that journal’s arcane bibliographic conventions. It will probably take longer to complete than an analysis, but when that day arrives the results will appear on this site. We should all live so long.
** Simmer, S. (1981). The academy of the Dead. Spring 41:89–106.
