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The Clinical Commentaries have been part of the British Journal of Psychotherapy from the beginning. They featured as a section in the first issue in 1984 and went through to 2007. After a gap of 9 years, their presence was renewed by Ann Horne and Mark Budden when the new series of Commentaries appeared, which now provides readers with an opportunity to engage (or ‘play’) via a detailed examination of a piece of clinical work and thereby articulate their own perspectives in relation to those of the commentators.
The clinical material and its discussion implies two types of freedom—for the clinician, who does so anonymously and with respect for patient confidentiality, and for the commentators, who discuss it independently of each other and in a format of free association rather than supervision. This enables the recreation in part of the process unfolding within the real session and in the clinician's mind.
Given the lack of inter-school comparisons in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, it was innovative at the time of the Journal's inception and continues to be so to this day. There were two reasons for this. After the UK psychotherapy split in the 1970s into an increasing number of separate organisations which often did not talk to each other, it was important to find a platform to bring these diverse opinions back into communication and offer some sort of comparison. Another aim was to help psychotherapists express their opinion, which was not easy at a time when most of the papers were published by psychoanalysts. However, regardless of qualifications, we all work with the clinical material and the Journal could become an important place to start and wade into theoretical discussion (Robert Hinshelwood, , personal communication).
The commentators who have generously been part of over 30-plus years have included not only representatives of more than just three British schools (Freudian, Kleinian or Independent) but also Lacanians, group-analysts, interpe