Editorial

It is a pleasure to return to the British Journal of Psychotherapy as Editor-in-Chief, having had the long association with the journal that Janine Sternberg has indicated in her generous note of welcome. The BJP was founded in the 1980s, and since then the clinical, professional and social context for analytic work has significantly changed. In renewing the journal's project and identifying how to take it forward, we need to acknowledge the setting in which it was created. When Bob Hinshelwood founded the BJP, he envisaged a clinical journal that could bring together the ‘fissiparous’ world of psychotherapy, by means of an ingenious and principled mix of representatives of analytical organizations on its Editorial Board. Over twenty years later, this ‘fissiparous’ clinical world is organized into registering bodies which have a complex, increasingly constructive relationship with one another, and with the public conversation about psychotherapy. Early BJPs carried ‘news from the front’, alongside clinical and theoretical articles: reports from the Rugby Conference (the precursor to the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy), and the emergent British Council of Psychotherapists, now the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC).

In 2010 the organizational landscape looks somewhat different. UKCP publishes The Psychotherapist (‘the national newsletter of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy’); BPC publishes New Associations (‘news, analysis, opinion for the psychoanalytic community’). UKCP and BPC are engaged in ongoing debate with organizations representing other modalities (most obviously, perhaps, cognitive-behavioural therapy) in the lead-up to statutory registration. In addition, UKCP provides a ‘home base’ for those among its membership who oppose statutory registration. It could be argued that one of the BJP's earlier functions - provision of a forum for debate about professional identity and structure - has been rendered unnecessary by the emergence and