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As we hand over responsibility for commissioning and editing the Clinical Commentaries section of the BJP to a new Board member - and possibly two Board members - we thought it might be interesting to look back on both the task and its execution over the four years we have been undertaking it.
That the Commentaries have proved to be a popular part of the journal was not a surprise (we had both responded to our Editor's invitation to take on this section with some eagerness as we both value the focus on clinical work and technique that it offers), but it has been a pleasure to hear just how many readers enjoy it and turn to it when their journal arrives. We hope, therefore, that the readership will continue to support this particular approach to thinking about clinical practice.
It is possible with such a format to end up with a kind of masterclass in supervision, if one is not careful. Those who comment on the clinical material do so best when they reflect on what is happening in the session, almost as a free association to the case summary and session material informed by their countertransference responses. After all the writers are all peers, so it is not a hierarchical process, and observing the flow of the commentators' free-floating responses can be really illuminating for both the reader and the original therapist. We have been fortunate in the main not to have had supervisions imposed on the case but rather helpful consideration elicited.
However, it has not always been an easy or straightforward task. The greatest difficulty has been our struggle to get case material to send to our commentators.
It has been somewhat simpler to get acceptances to our invitations to write a commentary. While this depends on having a reasonable confidence in one's ideas and thinking and one's ability to communicate them, on one's interest being engaged by the particular clinical material, and on having sufficient time free to write, there are significant compensations. There are t