The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

With this issue—Volume I, Number I—we announce the birth of a new psychoanalytic journal. Its legitimate siblings are quite mature and, when consulted prior to the conception of the newcomer, all expressed a genuine welcome into which crept no observable trace of anticipatory sibling rivalry. We are glad to join the respected company of The Psychoanalytic Review, aged 40, The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, aged 34, and The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, aged 22.

This is to be the "official" journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Such a designation does not mean to imply that the other American journals are unofficial in their scientific publications; it simply means that the new journal will publish, in addition to well-selected psychoanalytic papers, the official proceedings of the American Psychoanalytic Association. During the forty-two years of the Association its proceedings have, until recently, not been published at all. The Bulletin of the Association was published for three years, 1937 to 1940, and then abandoned until 1948 when it was revived in a new format. Since 1948 it has been published continuously, growing more voluminous each year as its editors attempted to include both scientific material and official reports of an Association which has grown in fifteen years from five to fourteen societies, and from 158 members to over triple that number. It was inevitable that the rapidly growing Association would need an official organ, and preliminary discussions led the Executive Council and the Association to approve of planning for the new journal in May 1951, and to final acceptance of the plans in December 1951.

The Journal is official in other senses, also. The Administrative Board consists of the current officers of the Association and the Editor. This Board, serving as the representative and executor of the Executive Council, is to conduct the business affairs of the