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Dear Sir
Could I just draw to your attention a small but significant point about the subediting and proofreading of the Journal. The article by J Susan Kelen on the ego and the self has been mangled by a persistent error. One of the great contributions of Heinz Kohut was the introduction of the term ‘selfobject’. This is printed thus to indicate that at the particular stage to which Kohut refers there is not a connection or a link or a tie between self and object - they are confused and identified. This shows up in therapy as a selfobject transference with a number of special aspects, as Kelen informs us. But in the article as printed this technical term is printed (every time!) as ‘self-object’, thus defeating the whole aim of the exercise. It seems that the subeditor had a set of rules about hyphens, and simply altered the manuscript to suit these general rules which are of course totally irrelevant and maiming in this particular case. I do think it is up to you as editor to watch out for this sort of thing and intercept it at an early stage. If you should print this letter, for example, do check on this point rather carefully, as otherwise it will read rather strangely!
Also I'm a bit surprised that you published the article by Liam Clarke making a mock of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET). It seems a bit cheap and easy to me. Also, in your editorial, you mention the content of this article by referring to - ‘the more ghastly scenes towards which the humanistic approach may appear to point’- while of course RET is not, and has never been counted as, a humanistic approach. It is one of the cognitive approaches, like the cognitive therapy of Aaron Beck and the personal construct therapy of George Kelly. Albert Ellis may sometimes claim to be humanistic, but he has never been reckoned by humanistic practitioners to be one of us, and he has