Editorial

This issue is filled with timeless gems from past and present. We are particularly excited that Brett Kahr, our consultant historian editor, has reproduced an early publication by John Bowlby entitled “Hysteria in children”, reprinted from the collection A Survey of Child Psychiatry, edited by Dr Ronald Grey Gordon . In his elegant style, Brett has reviewed the article placing it in its historical context, and he identifies this article as the birth of attachment theory.

In one of his Oxford lectures the poet Simon Armitage declared wittily: “The greatest art requires the least explanation”. In this respect the young Doctor John Bowlby's 1939 article, as well as being ahead of its time, describes both aptly and astutely the psychogenic and relational link between the body and mind as seen from a cluster of symptoms in young children in the interactions with their caregivers. Bowlby's pioneering thoughts are revealing even today, when the debate on the connection between mental health and the body are beginning to be validated. For example, he makes a simple yet profound contention: “Headaches are often found to come on after something particularly pleasant has happened, and take all the pleasure away” (p. 154, this issue). This resonates with a situation from my own experience when a client's eyes lit up when she felt understood after I offered her the interpretation that her regular headaches might convey the guilt of her enjoying life while her parents continued to demand her attention during adulthood. The growing body of research on therapy is making useful links between mind and body systems which illustrate what happens when there is a lack of integration between the immune system and mental health.

Considering how far we have come, in particular, with regard to the revelations in recent years about the extent of childhood sexual abuse, this article is still very much constrained by the limitations of its time. For example, in the case of Joan C, the additional