Editorial

IN THIS ISSUE…

Research in neuropsychoanalysis is helping to understand how brain structures are affected by psychological processes in early infancy, laying down the biological substrate of the human unconscious. Allan Schore reports evidence supporting the idea that mother-infant interactions directly influence the organization of brain systems in the early critical period of growth, and how these systems can be reorganized in the adult as a result of psychotherapeutic experiences.

Metaphor's special role in psychotherapy is due to its claims on the imagination, traditionally believed to provide a direct route to the unconscious. Terri Eynon investigates new theories in cognitive linguistics that show language to be fundamentally structured by metaphor, underpinning and extending the psychoanalytic view that metaphor is at the heart of language and meaning.

Symbol formation, the most remarkable achievement of the human mind, is discussed by Giovanna Rita DiCeglie. Patients produce, unconsciously, symbolic representations that enable the analyst to understand the people, thoughts and feelings within the patient's internal world.

In the past year or so there has been a worrying reduction in the number of submissions of clinical articles to the British Journal of Psychotherapy. If we are to continue to learn from each other and increase our body of knowledge, we must have the freedom to report our clinical experiences, questions, nagging doubts and mistakes in publications, as well as in public forums. It is generally agreed that without case reports we would be immeasurably impoverished. There can be no development in the field by means of theory alone: as Freud put it, theoretical argument yields no fruit and we must turn to the clinical material on which we rely.

Since we hold as a first principle the protection of our patients, I suspect, to a certain degree, it is the fear surrounding confidentiality and the consequences of its breach that inhibits writing up clinica