Correction

Dear Editors

You published an article of mine entitled ‘The worm that flies in the night’ in BJP 23(3): 343-64, 2007. It has been drawn to my attention by Dr Marta Brody that, through an incorrect citation and a failure to cite Dr Brody as the author of the ideas in a passage in this article, the work of Dr Brody has been misrepresented and wrongly attributed to Susan Deri. I now wish to correct this very unfortunate mistake, for which I take full responsibility.

In the final section of my paper in a passage on the work of Paul Klee, I write:

‘… the last piece by Paul Klee, left standing on his easel in 1940 … is considered by many to be the most monumental work of his career. The painting unites familiar objects of Klee's studio (the glass muller, the coffee-pot), images from his career (the strewn flowers, sometimes in the shape of P, also the coffee-pot) and objects that signify the void and death (notably the angel of death portrayed humorously) and crosses reminiscent of earlier work at the time of his mother's death . Klee, in poor health, had been occupied by concerns about death for many years. Here, he demonstrates his remarkable capacity for utilizing potential space and transitional thinking, expressed through the simultaneous freedom of composition and unity of structure. He creates a symbolic bridge that unites his past and present artistic life and world and his impending death .’

The ideas, words and interpretations in this paragraph were attributed to Susan Deri, whereas their legitimate author is Dr Brody. Although Dr Brody's article on Klee (‘Paul Klee: art, potential space and the transitional process’, Psychoanalytic Review 88(3): 369-92, June 2001), from which the above ideas were drawn, was cited in the references in my article, a commensurate attribution of her ideas was missing from the text. These two mistakes together gave rise both to misattribution and a potential misunderstanding that Dr Brody's ideas could have derived from Deri, a situatio