Introduction

The three papers published here represent part of a series of Scientific Meetings held at the former British Association of Psychotherapists (BAP), during the course of 2009. The remaining papers from the series, or those reflecting the spirit of the series, will be published in the following two issues of this Journal.

At that time, the BAP provided a unique home for its four sections - Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Jungian Analytic, Child and Adolescent and Psychoanalytic. The organizing group, the Public, Scientific and Events Committee, was concerned with how to further encourage cross-section dialogue and communication and how to give members direct opportunities to engage with this complex arrangement. Could we talk to each other in a common language? Could we listen to each other's approaches and ways of working in a spirit of receptivity and curiosity, or would our attachments to our own trainings and our convictions about our own orientations prove a stumbling block to open conversation and open minds?

A further consideration had us wondering whether we could apply our ways of working with our patients - endeavouring to tune in to their language and striving to hear what it is they are telling us, to our contact with each other. We wondered if we could meaningfully engage with other analysts and what felt important to them.

We called the series: ‘Essentially Ours, Specifically …’. Speakers from the different theoretical orientations were invited to prepare papers, and so the evenings ran as follows: ‘Essentially Ours, Specifically Independent’, for example, or ‘Essentially Ours, Specifically Jungian’ and so on. Only for the Contemporary Freudian paper did we turn to colleagues outside the BAP; otherwise two members illustrated central theoretical concepts of their particular orientation by relating them to lively clinical material. The theme appeared to catch the imagination of members, and the evenings attracted capacity audiences. It seemed many of the speake