Editorial

Scientific periodicals usually share a common goal — to impart highly specialized information for a limited number of readers. This is effected through a complex of screening, selecting, editing, and finally publishing papers contributed by colleagues working within the narrow sphere of interest as delineated by the sponsors and editors of the particular journal. In the strictest sense, a psychoanalytic journal is concerned solely with analyst and patient. It may thus seem that our concern is a narrow one, confined to psychoanalytic theory and practice and to the effectiveness and validity of particular psychoanalytic thinking and technique.

That is only a part of the truth however, for psychoanalytic formulations have found their way into many areas of everyday existence. It is not necessary to belabor this point, nor to explain or justify a departure from the purist position. For, as psychoanalysts, we are concerned with human welfare generally, and not exclusively with the welfare of our own patients. Although analysts can help only a small number of people directly, their influence, whether through teaching and/or writing, may transcend the confines of the consulting room. Furthermore, there are many workers in the field, exclusive of analysts, who can contribute valuable information to the Journal's readership; and any scientific journal may well serve as a broader educational vehicle than it was originally designed to be.

With wider dissemination of information as a goal, the editors of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis are introducing several changes with Volume 34. Four issues will be published each year instead of the previous two, and a larger, more varied professional readership will be sought, a readership concerned with matters relating to the human condition, with its problems and possible solutions. New sections in forthcoming issues will include: Candidate Contributions, a section especially designed to encourage psychoanalysts-in-training from al