Editorial

In the last issue, we marked the 20^th anniversary of the Journal by remembering how the BJP came into being, and why. Appropriately, questions of identity and origins, of giving and receiving and of loss and recollection are the themes that emerge in this issue.

Anthony Ryle opens by challenging the large claims made for the contribution to psychotherapy of Evolutionary Psychology, a theory that has been widely presented as a revolutionary new science, a way to bring together all the behavioural sciences within a Darwinian perspective.

Anthony Winston follows with a brief survey of theories about anorexia nervosa, followed by a case history of ‘Simon’, demonstrating how in anorexia the nutritive/toxic link to the mother is forcibly broken in a ‘no-entry’ defence against invasion by unwanted projections, with dire consequences for the development of identity.

Turning from the need to keep things out to the need for acceptance and exchange, Mark Evans discusses unconscious motivations for gift-giving in psychotherapy. He describes three incidents from a single therapy to illustrate how gift-giving as a process can change over time.

On 13 August 2004 Donald Meltzer, a major figure in our profession, died. Amongst the papers accepted for publication that I inherited from Ann Scott were one of his later ruminations on thought disorder - with characteristic relish he repeatedly refers to this in the words of an analysand, as ‘shit cream’ - and a companion paper by Meg Harris Williams, considering Bion's three ‘vertices of knowledge’, science, art and religion. These papers will be seen by some as provocative, by others as thought-provoking, original heuristic contributions.

Meg Harris Williams, in her obituary of Dr Meltzer in our last issue, told us that his nickname at school was Tubby Belcher, a reference to his size and pugnacity. He had strong views and inspired strong feelings. We publish here one of his last interviews, on the subject of supervision. He loved being inte