Editorial

In 1984 when Bob Hinshelwood had the idea of starting a journal to represent the many different, sometimes opposing, voices in British psychoanalytic psychotherapy, he invited a number of organizations to become involved. Six organizations accepted this challenge. They worked out a deal by which all their members would subscribe to the Journal at a greatly reduced rate and the Editorial Board would comprise representatives from every Sponsoring Organization. This meant that they all had a hand in the Journal and shared the responsibility for its future.

That unwritten contract was symbolic of the spirit of ecumenism that lay at the heart of the enterprise. The task was and is to struggle against polarizing processes and repeatedly renew co-operative communication. The Journal has grown well beyond its local origins and is now read by thousands of clinicians across the world, but its roots lie in British psychoanalytic psychotherapy and its discontents, its historical tensions and divisions.

The attempt to hold what we have in common in the face of what divides us is a tough project and perhaps it will never get any easier. Yet I believe, as I imagine those founding fathers believed, that it is important to keep talking, stay involved, win a little, lose a little. It is encouraging to receive so many messages of appreciation from admirers of the Journal. But also and inevitably, from time to time its Sponsoring Organizations have expressed various dissatisfactions. The Journal is in thrall to psychoanalysis, not psychoanalytic enough, too broad based, too obvious, too recondite and so on. Such differing views are hard to integrate. In the very first BJP editorial there is mention of a ‘swaying edifice of acrobats’ and I am often reminded of the phrase.

Bob Hinshelwood told me recently that all the Chairs involved in those early days were enormously supportive of the aims of the new venture, but of all of them, the most supportive and most enthusiastic was Lionel Monteit