Editorial

IN THIS ISSUE …

Perversions in women can be understood as attempts to find temporary relief for the intolerable psychic pain of childhood abuse. Dorothy Lloyd-Owen examines the patterns of female perverse personality and behaviour, contrasting them with perversions in the male.

The treatment of depression is of central concern to all psychotherapy practitioners. Charles Montgomery proposes that losing, finding and failure in group therapy are, paradoxically, key experiences that are capable of producing lasting beneficial change in the depressed patient.

Assessing couples as to their suitability for a psychoanalytic treatment approach requires holding several points of view in mind simultaneously. Monica Lanman explores the assessment procedure, giving clinical examples of the complex task of formulating shared unconscious dilemmas and mutual projections in the couple.

The effectiveness of analytic therapy rests on the involvement and the personal qualities of the therapist. Jill Ashley writes of what it means for the therapist to be present for the patient, to ‘be there’ in ordinariness and decency, so that vulnerable areas of the patient can be reached, avoiding the pressure to become the patient's bad internal object.

The BJP Student Essay Prize for 2002 was awarded to Simon D.R. Thomas for his contribution to the understanding of issues in the analysis of men by men, and the particular difficulties in the transference and countertransference exchanges found in the male analytic dyad.

Harold Bourne, in a brief Clinical Communication, writes of his analytic work with a bisexual patient with psychotic anxieties that were activated by contact with female genitalia. Dream analysis plays an important part in helping to understand this man in his struggles with his sexuality.

Antonina Ingrassia discusses and gives examples of letters to patients treated on the NHS. She illustrates the thoughtfulness and care necessary when writing to patients, particularly at delicate moments