You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This issue of JAPA may or may not be the last issue of the last volume of the second millennium, depending on how much of a purist one is, but it is indisputably the last issue of the last volume of the first century of psychoanalysis. That being so, I think it is appropriate for the editor to offer a quick glance at JAPA's past and present, and a glimpse of its future.
In the very first issue of the new journal in 1953, Robert Knight, then president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, set forth JAPA's editorial charge: “To select the best contributions to psychoanalysis the Editor and Editorial Board can find among submitted and solicited articles.” That first volume, seven hundred and sixty pages in total length, included twenty-one papers, two brief communications, and four panel reports. All but one of the contributors was a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the exception was a lone member of the IPA.
JAPA has grown since 1953. Volume, 47, the current one, runs to almost fifteen hundred pages. There have been thirty-three scientific papers, including two published with commentaries (five each). Of the contributors to this issue, twenty-three are members of the American, four are members of the IPA, and six are affiliated with neither. Sigmund Freud is a contributor also—he has a letter, never before published, in this issue, which also includes an original play.
Volume 1 had no book reviews. The book review section began in 1974, with Nathaniel Ross as the first book review editor. From the three reviews in that volume the section has grown into the JAPA Review of Books, a journal within a journal ably edited by Glen Gabbard. Volume 47 includes four book essays (covering eleven books), fifty-four individual book reviews, and four letters from abroad.