Editorial

Our psychoanalytical past and present are both strongly represented in this issue of the BJP. An important part of our history is given a fresh view in two strong papers from the recent Freud-Jung Letters Conference, followed by a third review essay of the recently published correspondence between Jung and Fr. Victor White. Other contemporary subjects include a paper on research, aspects of Kleinian theory, assessment in supervision and a plea for mothers with certain pathologies to be treated jointly with their babies.

We begin with the papers of James Astor and James Fisher who, from different perspectives, describe the development of the relationship between Freud and Jung and its sad ending as revealed so vividly in the letters between them. These extended papers cover the same material but they understand and interpret in very different ways the intensity of the bond between the two men and the emotional drama of their situation. James Astor corrects the traditional Freudocentric view of the relationship and tells the story of the beginning and middle phase of their relationship and their final falling out in a fluent and dramatic way; James Fisher links the story to these two remarkable men's developing thoughts on psychosis, and brings in the parallel with King Lear in Freud's ambivalence to finding a successor to carry forward and develop his ideas. There is much else that can be drawn from these letters, not least their inspiring struggle to get to the truth of mental life. It is also salutary to think again about the beginnings of the profession and what we can learn from our history.

In our next paper we turn from the beginnings of psychoanalysis to contemporary Kleinian theory. ‘A Kleinian theory of sexuality’ by Trevor Lubbe spells out the development of Freud's theories in Klein and then uses Meltzer's development of Klein to refute André Green's well-publicized view that Freud's theories have been desexualized, in particular by British Object Relations