Editorial

Themes of discomfort and bewilderment are at the forefront of this issue of the Journal, along with the ideas - sometimes innovative, sometimes traditional - that can support the clinician in bearing with and processing the difficulties of the work. As a colleague of mine said recently, ‘practitioners need holding as much as their clients’, and I hope this issue will contribute to such holding.

In a strong challenge to mentalism, with its ‘over-validation of mind and thinking’, Susie Orbach extends her longstanding interest in body countertransference to a consideration of the body in the consulting room. She proposes that we address the body on its own terms rather than solely for what it symbolizes, in order not to miss crucial dimensions of patients' experience. An exploratory discussion of touch (that is, the classical taboo on touch) follows. Orbach is supported by the framework provided by the John Bowlby Memorial Lecture and Conference in this endeavour.

We are helped to think about narcissistic crying in Tracey Alexander's review of the apparent failure of empathy when crying leaves the therapist ‘unmoved, irritated, repelled, manipulated, controlled or exploited’. Nicholas Humphreys' topic is the seemingly more appealing one of fascination, but we encounter an equally hard-headed account of the dynamic tension between consciousness and unconscious forces, especially concerning projection. Alison Summers' evocative account of the ‘pressures on the therapist to join the patient's closed systems’ completes the trio of papers on ‘Clinical States’. Next, Nick Barwick imaginatively links a Winnicottian notion of transitional space with Ron Britton's influential work on publication anxiety. The clinical commentary, with its portrayal of a first, anxious meeting of a therapy group, reminds us of the knowledge of the wider ‘therapy culture’ that individuals may bring to their therapeutic membership.

Returning to my first comment, then, what kind of holding can a psycho