PSYCHIATRY AND SEXUALITY: DR. EMIL PINTÉR’S MONOLOGUE 

In the Replika monologue of this issue, the psychiatrist Emil Pintér tells the story of his life and career.  Pintér obtained his medical diploma in Budapest, and began to work as an assistant doctor.  Leaving Hungary in 1956, the young man settled in Switzerland, where he had to start his career anew.  Within fifteen years, he became the director of one of the biggest private sanatoriums in the country, and built out a private practice where he treated thousands of patients.  
In 1994 Pintér published the book Nähe und Distanz in der Psychotherapie on the doctor-patient relationship, and the possible therapeautic role of sexuality in psychotherapy.  The following year a vicious media campaign was launched against Pintér, who was then arrested for alleged sexual harrassment.  Although acquitted by the court, he was expelled from the Swiss Psychiatric Association, and his license to practice psychiatry was revoked.  As a result, he returned to Hungary in 1996, and now lives and works in Budapest. 
 

LATE MODERN

The essays in this thematic section focus on East European modernization that has accelerated since 1989 and may be arguably described as postcommunist Americanization.  The introduction by Gyula Zeke discusses the feasibility of criticizing modernization and lays the course for future analysis.  Starting out from the vanishing skills of conserving fruits, jam, and pickles, Noémi Saly’s essay arrives at a surprisingly modern definition of the conservative word view.  The linguist Ádám Nádasdy uncovers the genealogy of the meanings of the world “modern” and its derivations in the Hungarian language.  Eszter Babarczy’s philosophical paper questions the relevance of the category “postmodern” from the perspective of the history of ideas.  Tibor Kuczi’s sociological essay discusses how the conceptual framework prevailing in the modern (American) social sciences became paradigmatic in the rest of the world.  The loosely structured writing of Zsolt Nagy describes some of the material products and institutions that have emerged during the recent Americanization of Hungary.  Finally, Csaba Pléh’s study explores the relationship between personality and the computer.
 

SPIRIT OF THE PLACE: POSTCARDS FROM YUGO-SLAVIA

This selection documents the everyday experience of war in the former Yugoslavia.  Miklós Déri’s photographs taken in Sarajevo in 1993 capture moments of everyday life in the war-stricken city.  Framing the pictures, István Eörsi’s poem and short essay give a poetic and a narrative representation of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica. 
The second part presents the correspondence of four friends, four female writers: the Croatian philosopher and writer Rada Iveković, who emigrated to Paris in 1991; Radmila Lazić, poet from Belgrad; Biljana Jovanović, Serbian writer reporting from Ljubjana, Belgrad and Skopje; and Maruša Krese, Slovenian poet living in Berlin at the time of the war.  The letters written between June 1991 and November 1992 both reveal the authors’ personal feelings, thoughts, and lost illusions, and inform us of the most significant events of the war: protests, gatherings, as well as war-time diplomacy.
 

NEW VERBALITY?

In the e-way column of Replika, numerous articles have investigated the various pressing issues emerging in and around the use of Internet communication.  From this time on, however, the editors intend to introduce the readers into the paradigm of communications theory which has played a crucial role in shaping the scientific discourse on the community development aspects of the Internet.  This paradigm, generally associated with the works of McLuhan, Ong, and Havelock, has its roots partly in Central Europe.  The writings of István Hajnal can be seen as one of the precedessors:  his work is often quoted by McLuhan and Ong.  
It is especially our pleasure to present the readers with a so far unpublished paper by István Hajnal that has survived several decades in manuscript form.  The editors thank Kristóf Nyíri for not only “discovering” the manuscript but also for contributing an introduction to its first publication.  Nyíri shows that István Hajnal’s position in intellectual history makes his work an integral part of the most recent discourses on communications theory.  
Although with this issue Replika is making its own semi-paradigmatic turn in conceptualizing the character of the e-way column, the editors do not intend to neglect practice.  This time one review article represents contemporary debates:   Béla Mester’s piece on Esther Dyson’s new book.  In the future, nonetheless, historical essays, cultural analyses, and review articles will be published side-by-side in the e-way column.