Editorial

The existence of an unconscious mind connecting us to the rest of the world and to our fellow beings, that is both basically reality-orientated and phantasy-prone, that possesses both innate wisdom and folly, composed of and related to the past, present and future, is a founding doctrine of the psychoanalytic view. Moreover, the dynamic unconscious is in constant motion, forming and dissolving patterns, providing us, when we can gain a momentary glimpse, with therapeutic opportunities. Unconscious truth speaks to us indirectly, often in the gaps and slips surrounding rational speech. In the first paper in this issue, a slip is made by a young woman in speaking to her father and the authors, Judy Tame Wall and Del Loewenthal, analyse its meaning according to three contrasting theories, those of Freud, Laing and Lacan. This Journal has a long-held interest in comparative studies, believing that they foster thinking.

Comparisons often lead to integrative theories. The second paper by Paul March is a study of psychotherapy that employs an amalgam of cognitive-behavioural and psychoanalytic techniques. When patients don't do their homework, a psychotic sub-personality is hypothesized, morose, uncooperative and unable to learn, which takes over the functioning of the person.

Next, Patricia Polledri reports on the psychotherapy with a man who murdered his mother as an adolescent, perceiving her as an agent of evil. Intrapsychic changes occurred as a result of psychoanalytically-based psychotherapy in a Secure Unit. Patrick Gallwey supplies the Foreword to this paper, setting out the background to forensic psychotherapy, the treatment of patients who exhibit dangerous behaviour or who are criminally ill.

Following this, Anthony Bateman uses the term ‘psychotherapeutic psychiatry’ to describe the integration of cognitive, psychodynamic and biological approaches in the treatment of severely disturbed borderline patients, arguing for a creative partnership between the psychothera