Editorial

Nina Coltart's public lecture from last May is published here at last. The time that articles take to get into printed form is unpleasantly long. The various stages from submission publication takes mostly about a year or more. The sedate process of assessment, requiring busy people to comment in detail on the papers, is exacerbated by the build up of those that are eventually agreed as suitable, which then have to wait their turn. To deal with the accumulating material, we have increased the size of the Journal. As you may have noticed each issue is mostly around 100 pages long, however there is a limit to the size since production costs at the printer are 70% of all costs, and each additional page costs some £ 100. So, the assessment of suitability of papers is an increasingly important task of the editorial group and advisors. The policy has been to establish a broad range of material: from the solidly thought-out discussion such as Nina Coltart's paper to the adventurously unusual like Bertram Karon's inspirational look at how to make the treatment of the acute schizophrenic easy! It has been important also to make the Journal a vehicle for comparative study of different approaches to psychotherapy. The Clinical Commentaries have been the single most appreciated series; and we have been running a series on theoretical concepts as seen from different points of view - the series on narcissism finishes now and we are starting one on the mind of the infant which will include 4-5 contributions from various views.

The difference in the different schools is also a political matter and we are pleased to have the keynote paper by Deryck Dyne, from the 1987 ‘Rugby’ Conference (held in Canterbury!). Its appearance in print should coincide roughly with the 1988 Conference by which time we will know if there really is a productive move towards an umbrella profession. Until the Rugby Conference happened there was largely benign disinterest between the different schools; after