Editorial

Imagine how difficult it is to make a small selection from more than 400 papers, themselves originally picked out from countless numbers of articles submitted to the Journal over the last 20 years.

All the members of the editorial board were involved in the choosing of papers for this retrospective issue to mark the 20th anniversary of the BJP. The consultant editors were also asked to make suggestions. Between us we read through all the papers and then began a long process of selecting and discarding, arguing and compromising, to produce a long list, a shorter list, a shortlist, a revised shortlist, another revised shortlist and, finally, a contents list. This was a huge amount of work but I am very pleased to say that after all that, everyone concerned has at least one paper that they picked, in this issue.

Of course I did worry that we would end up with something that resembled a horse designed by committee. And perhaps we have. But it seemed important to me that we all had a hand in this, because the editorial board of the BJP, uniquely, is made up of representatives from nine psychotherapy organizations, some BCP, some UKCP, and these nine people from nine different trainings work together to produce this Journal.

Edward Said described the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that he founded with Daniel Barenboim thus, ‘It doesn't pretend to be building bridges and all that hokey stuff. But there it is, a paradigm of coherent and intelligent living together’. The politics of our little profession are nothing in comparison to those bitter and bloody divisions, yet I like to think that, in its very small way, the BJP also might provide a sort of clearing amongst the trees in which something productive and creative can happen.

As a child I used to go with my grandmother to auctions where she bought trunks of antique clothes and textiles. The pleasure of delving into these never paled, never disappointed. You might find anything; a pink ostrich-feather cape, frail lace, crêpe