Editorial

Writing the editorial creates a sort of time warp effect, because the 6-month lead time of the Journal means that what I am writing now, you will be reading some 3-4 months later. When I was writing the editorial for 23(1), for example, the Journal was about to be sold but it was not yet certain which of the offers then ‘on the table’ would be accepted. By the time you came to read it, the sale was complete and the whole situation had changed; new owners, new publishers, new production team and so on. Similarly, by the time you read this editorial, a new Editor will be in post. I am extremely sad to be leaving the Journal but it is appropriate that a new order should start with a new Editor.

As you read this, the farewell party for Artesian Books will also have taken place and I hope to have joined with many of our loyal authors, editorial advisors and other ‘friends of the BJP’, together with those of our erstwhile sister journal ‘Psychoanalysis and History’, to celebrate a remarkable achievement. I have several times referred in the pages of this journal to the creative vision of Bob Hinshelwood, when he brought together all those organisations who were willing, to set up the co-operative venture that was the BJP. Over 22 years the BJP has grown and flourished to become the most successful and widely read British journal in its field and I have no doubt it will continue to develop and improve under its new owners.

Professor R D Hinshelwood, the founder and ‘onlie begetter’ of these journals, is an eminent Kleinian analyst, scholar, writer and teacher whose career is well documented. As owner of the BJP he has always had a very light touch as he strongly believes in a healthy tolerance of disparate views and is not someone who wishes to assert the hegemony of his particular school of thought. He is well known for his generous encouragement of authors and I may add, editors too. I have learned a great deal from talking to him and observing him and I am grateful for th