Editorial Overview

The death of Anna Freud on 9 October, even though not quite unexpected, has nevertheless dealt a severe blow to all of us working at the Clinic who, for so many years, have relied on her leadership and inspiration and who have benefited from her unique personal qualities in many different ways. Although we would have liked to devote this issue of the Bulletin to Anna Freud and her memory, we felt we needed more time to prepare a worthy memorial issue. This is therefore planned for next spring.

Meanwhile we continue our series of discussions with Anna Freud of her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence which were chaired and later edited by Joseph Sandler. The present instalment covers the discussion of the chapter on ‘Restriction of the Ego’ which addresses itself above all to the theoretically and clinically important distinction between neurotic inhibitions and ego restrictions.

This issue also contains a further contribution to our series on The hampstead Psychoanalytic Index in which we give brief accounts of the sections into which the Index is subdivided. The section here is the one dealing with various aspects of a child's object relationships as they emerge in the course of analytic treatment.

Ehud Koch's paper ‘The awakening of a depressed, inhibited boy’ is a clinical report on the analysis of a latency boy. It is of particular interest not only because of Jason's psychopathology but because he was one of those children in treatment at our Clinic who—due to external circumstances—had to change therapists in the course of his treatment, the repercussions of which are fully dealt with in the paper presented here.

The issue concludes with a Profile on an adolescent boy, written by Carla Elliott. It is, in fact, the first Diagnostic Profile on an adolescent to be published in the Bulletin and should therefore be of particular interest to those who are engaged in the difficult task of assessment during adolescence.

Alex Holder