Editorial

In this issue we are able to return to our project to compare schools of thought through the medium of commentaries upon clinical material. This effort was highly regarded in the first issue even though the commentaries themselves were disagreed with. That was all to the good: it seems to suggest genuine differences of approach. Comment on these commentaries would be worthwhile collecting and we will, if that is forthcoming, make that one feature of a correspondence section. So readers are invited to express their views. Because of the nature of printers' deadlines and publishers' obsessionalities, it is difficult to get letters into the subsequent issue, and in this issue we have reactions to the contents of the first issue - including the clinical commentary.

The comparison of different models is the theme of a large proportion of this issue. Delmonte and Kenny tackle a vast literature of meditation and classify the types into two general forms - the concentrative techniques and the mentally expanding techniques. Meditation has been reviewed by psychoanalytic writers and the present authors enter into the discussion of the most appropriate framework for thinking about meditation, comparing a psychoanalytic model with a behavioural one and a personal construct theory model. Pedder looks at a very different topic-depression - and the progress of psychoanalytic theory of the factors involved. He is impressed with the possible common factor of low self esteem in various non-psychoanalytic models (e.g. Brown's sociological model) which correspond to the psychoanalytic model of impaired internalisation of good experiences and a good internal object that sustains self-esteem.

Introjective problems are also the focus of the clinically oriented paper by Robert May. He discusses and illustrates theories of narcissism. The particular contenders are those of Kernberg and of Kohut. He also makes the interesting point that these American writers are ranged against each other over