Editorial

The Journal is delighted to be publishing the Proceedings from ‘A Question of Confidence - Privacy Under Pressure’, the British Confederation of Psychotherapists' conference on confidentiality in March 2003. The papers make a crucial contribution to furthering debate in this area. A striking feature of the conference was the radical and challenging mix of papers: conference members had an opportunity to think not only about external relationships with the judiciary and the State, but internal relationships and the nature of the profession, in a way which allowed for the complexity of relations of confidentiality to be held fully in mind.

Following Coline Covington's introductory comments on background and context, the first group of papers, oriented to but not limited to considerations of the external world, cover the work of those clinicians and lawyers who are working with government on public policy and disclosure: Rob Hale, Pip Garvey and Alexander Layton QC. The first three speakers provide an invaluable account of the state of play in respect of official debate and of work in progress both clinically and politically, and consider what might be the most appropriate frame of mind from which to approach questions of disclosure. The second group of papers juxtapose two very different perspectives on psychoanalysis as a profession: those of Christopher Bollas and David Tuckett. While both offer an extended critique of the institutional dynamics and group relations of the profession, they have different readings of transparency as a goal for the profession, and of the nature of psychoanalysis as a treatment. Bollas's comic riff - the comedy of audit and disclosure which begins and ends his paper and had the audience in stitches - served only to underline the utter seriousness of his central point: ‘What is psychoanalysis? What does it claim to do? For what could it be held accountable, in what way, and by whom?’ Equally serious was David Tuckett's argument that the s