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With this issue we are commencing a new series of interrelated articles, this time concerned with the Psychoanalytic Index of the Hampstead Clinic. In some ways they will parallel and complement the series of papers on the Diagnostic Profile which has been published in the Bulletin over the last three years, in that the Index provides a metapsychological assessment of clinical material after one or more years of analytic treatment. The articles on the Index are intended to give some idea of the purpose of the Index, the indexing procedure and the content of the various sections which make up the Index. However, we will not be publishing in their entirety the separate Manuals which are the backbone of the Index. We have chosen instead to provide a general survey which will include typical examples of indexed material. In addition, we will be publishing representative Index cards from individual cases. The present issue contains the first two short articles in this series on the Hampstead Psychoanalytic Index: an Introduction to the history, purpose and methods of the Index, and a brief account of the section containing the General Case Material.
This issue also continues the discussions with Anna Freud on The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, chaired and edited by Joseph Sandler. The discussions of Chapter 4 on the classical defence mechanisms extended over eight weekly meetings, and this issue contains the first half of these deliberations, with the remainder to follow in part 4.
The final contribution in the present issue is a clinical paper by Jill Hodges—one of our students at the time the paper was written and presented—on the beginning of the analysis of a pre-adolescent black girl, giving a vivid account of the girl's struggle, living in a predominantly white community, to come to terms with the implications of her dark skin colour.