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This book is the ninth in the series. More are projected.
While I can see that it is a worthwhile venture to put groups of International Journal of Psychoanalysis papers, classified under themes, into book form, I think it has its drawbacks. The more casual shopper might seize on this volume and, once home with it, be disappointed to realize that s/he has already read every word. Arguably, s/he should have spotted the Journal's name written clearly at the bottom of the front cover; but s/he might not have. As an ageing profession, many of us probably have several decades-worth of this valued periodical on our shelves, and our memories may not yet have atrophied.
That makes it more surprising, at least to me, that all the papers selected for this volume are less than ten years old. The IJP, I learn from the Series Preface, is now aged 80.I would have been very glad if the first 50 years of its life had been quarried and represented. I would then have seen papers that have never been in my possession in the form in which they were originally published. But in fact the first 72 years of the Journal's life are ignored in this selection. Why?
It occurs to me that the use of literature in psychoanalytic writing may not be new, but is on the increase. As a profession, we are now much more sensitive to matters of confidentiality - not before time - than our predecessors were. To look to literature when we want to clothe our ideas is, perhaps, amongst other things, a way of avoiding publishing extended case