Editorial

The immediate context for the opening paper in this issue of the Journal, Juliet Newbigin's ‘Psychoanalysis and homosexuality: keeping the discussion moving’, was a conference, held in January 2102 by the British Psychoanalytic Council, which agreed a position statement on homosexuality. To explore what necessitated the statement, Newbigin traces the history of psychoanalytic thinking on homosexuality from Freud's work to the normative approach of the post-war generation of analysts, acknowledging the emergence of a radical, clinical perspective on homosexuality over the last twenty years. She makes use of post-modern cultural theory, and recent analytic work on cultural and colour difference, to argue that clinicians now have an opportunity to ‘detect and question’ the theoretical bias that has produced a distorted view of the experience of lesbians and gay men. Her closely argued paper has already generated considerable interest, having been presented, in an earlier version, at the British Association of Psychotherapists (now part of the British Psychotherapy Foundation); more recently at a Foundation for Psychotherapy and Counselling Ethics Day; and at the Tavistock Clinic's Thinking Space. In publishing the paper the BJP is delighted to extend the debate.

Next, in our ‘Research’ section, Anne Ward, Barbara Wood and Masud Awal present findings from a substantive study within the Maudsley Psychotherapy Service. They are making a significant contribution to the literature on practice-based evidence. ‘A naturalistic psychodynamic psychotherapy study: evaluating outcome with a patient perspective’ uses both quantitative and qualitative methodology; the authors argue for the significance of qualitative data in measurement of patient satisfaction. Acknowledging the difficulties of research in this area, their specific focus is the ‘more general’ secondary care psychotherapy services across the NHS, ‘a population that is poorly represented in the outcome literature’, wit