Editorial Overview

The present issue opens with a contribution from the Clinic's archives, being the first of twelve instalments of edited discussions with Anna Freud on her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. These discussions were held during 1972/3 and were chaired by Joseph Sandler who is preparing them for publication in the Bulletin. Each instalment will cover the discussion of one chapter from Anna Freud's book and we hope that the edited versions will convey something of the liveliness of these stimulating and pertinent discussions.

Deborah Bandler's clinical paper which follows is a fairly recent account of the first year in the analysis of a young girl which highlights, among other things, the difficulties of carrying out such a treatment in the face of a highly ambivalent attitude towards it on the part of the parents, in particular the girl's mother.

There follow three reports on the work of ongoing study groups. The first one, written by Pauline Cohen and Barbara Grant, pertains to the Toddler Observation Group. This group not only provides a service to mothers and their toddlers but also gives our new students, who are already engaged in observing infants in their home environment and in the well-Baby Clinic, an opportunity to extend their observations to slightly older children within a group setting.

George Moran and Maria Berger report on their group's work and on the considerable problems in studying diabetic children from a psychoanalytical point of view, in particular the difficulties in getting parents and children to accept psychoanalytic treatment where recommended.

Maria Berger is the main author of the second report on the work of the study group on the problems of adopted children. The present report addresses itself to the issue of these children's sense of identity and, above all, to the significance of the creation of imaginary figures by some of these children.

This year's first issue included two reports of visits by Clinic staff to Cairo to teach stu