Continuity and Change Redux

It is an honor to have been chosen as the next Editor of JAPA. I am mindful of the five distinguished editors who have preceded me and have worked closely with two of them: Arnold Richards and Steven Levy. I have learned much from them about journal publishing but, more important, I have absorbed the high standards of scholarship and openness to innovation that they have set for JAPA.

These are challenging times in which to produce a high-quality scholarly journal in a field such as psychoanalysis, where no one theoretical perspective dominates among diverse approaches and where each has its own dedicated journal. Although some have decried the loss of a single theoretical perspective as the Balkanization of psychoanalysis (Stepansky 2009), I consider this diversity a positive source of energy for the growth of our field. In such a fertile landscape, I envision JAPA's unique position as the agora—the marketplace—where the best of different perspectives can meet and engage in civil discourse for the advancement of our understanding of the human mind, its relation to other minds, and its historical and cultural context.

In my introduction to JAPA's 50th Anniversary issue (Litowitz 2002) I cited the challenge of “continuity and change,” comparing our field to an organism that must adapt to current conditions or die out. Selecting a female psychoanalyst with an academic, nonmedical background as the next JAPA Editor is evidence of the changes already happening in our profession, as well as an acknowledgment of the need for our discipline to compete in the marketplace of ideas among both clinical and academic scholars.

Psychoanalysis is a unique clinical method of inquiry into the human condition. A major goal for JAPA will be to seek ways to share the significant findings from our unique database with scholars whose findings rely on other methodologies. Only through an open exchange of ideas can we establish consilience across disciplines or identify and eliminate obstacle