A Final Note: A Pivotal Moment

This is a personal moment for me. The Journal has been an important thing which I am proud of. When I started it with a small band of colleagues from the six original organisations which founded the Journal in 1984, I could not have imagined it to have developed into the player it has become. So passing it on to a new owner is a big thing. I have thought to myself it is like choosing a boarding school for my child - or arranging a marriage for a daughter. Quite impossible tasks!

The Journal started as a very small idea and was quite remarkably successful from the very first issue - which had to be very quickly reprinted. And that powerful support for the Journal has carried it through many difficulties since - not least the division of our world into the UKCP and BCP as it was. I can't count all the people who have contributed in all sorts of ways to the success of the Journal over more than two decades. So I should give a generic thank you to all of you, to everyone past and present, rather than invidiously selecting some rather than others. It is simply the case that the Journal has been the product of very many dedicated people and is no way my creation, even though I had a founding hand in it.

Although the Journal was never a direct component of the identity of British psychotherapy, it has been very central in supporting that identity. I remember when I was setting up the Journal, one of the very first subscribers wrote on the subscription form that ‘It is about time we had an organ of our own!’ I have always been spurred on by that sense of the psychotherapy profession needing a boost to its potency. And have always wanted the Journal to contribute to that seminal function. I believe it has born real fruit, and must continue to do so.

However, now the important thing for me is to recognise that I have given up my stake in the future. However tempting it is, nobody has a right to reach beyond the grave as it were and seek to go on influencing the future. So it is