Editorial

In keeping with our wish to publish papers from a diversity of psychoanalytic perspectives, this issue contains a paper from the Lacanian school as well as an introduction to the life and works of Françoise Dolto, the French psychoanalyst, whose work, particularly with children, is strangely absent from the English language. We continue the debate over state regulation by taking up again the vexed question of ‘evidenced-based therapies’ in the form of a short paper and four discussants who respond in very different ways to the concerns outlined in the paper. Such concerns relating to the question of regulation of the profession have been voiced for some time now - see a letter in BJP 20(4) from Haya Oakley in the summer of 2004. The part played by the transference in the training of students of psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy is another subject that seems to have attracted little investigation so we are pleased to present a paper on the importance of the role played by interpersonal dynamics in the teaching process. Finally, we have a paper that revisits the enigmatic work of Bion and Meltzer this time as a means by which to encourage us as practitioners to consider the spirit in which we undertake the complex task of psychoanalysis.

Susan Schwartz's paper gives us a remarkably clear and concise account of the recent thinking and research coming from the Lacanian school of Psychoanalysis in relation to the concept of Ordinary Psychosis. This development she suggests is a response to the change in the nature of the social link between people which can lead to an increase in symptoms, particularly the addictions that need no one else to produce satisfaction. She tracks clearly the complex development of Lacan's thesis on psychosis that is organized around the mechanism of ‘foreclosure’. Schwartz outlines Lacan's early work when he made his radical suggestion that the analyst needs to occupy the position of ‘secretary’ to the psychotic patient, through to