Editorial

The theoretical traditions within psychoanalysis are each seen by some adherents as exclusive of the others. Occasionally there are articles that help us to fit the different theories together in a conceptual scheme, bringing them together in a Way that validates each and broadens our understanding of the whole. Our first paper by Bob Hinshelwood is one of these. Hinshelwood places in order three levels of experience: classical symbol-formation, primitive defence mechanisms and the layer beneath them both, the containing function of the body ego as identified by Esther Bick in her notion of the skin as container. Each of these levels has its moment for each individual, but for the analyst to confine himself to one level would amount to reductionism.

In the second paper, containment is also a theme: the early containment by the mother and its relationship to the containment of food in bulimic conditions. Patricia Marsden relates eating disorders to the myth of Demeter and Persephone in which we can see the unresolved struggles of early infancy that are reactivated in the adolescent changes into sexual maturity. Mother and daughter are threatened by both separation and fusion so that Persephone's ritual descent into the underworld and reappearance signify an enactment of primitive oral fears and sexual anxieties simultaneously.

In a third paper about primitive level functioning, Michael Leibowitz introduces a new concept, protective-identification. In the early states of extreme dependency, the infant's terror is of abandonment by its objects. To protect itself from this possible trauma, the infant identifies with its object, through an oral assimilation, creating a narcissistic defence that allows a sense of stability and survival.

Then, the contribution by Sherly Williams addresses the difficulties of the ‘ends and endings’ of therapy: ‘end’ has a dual meaning as both the aims and purposes of therapeutic work as well as the conclusion of a relationship. Williams discus