Editorial

In the spring of this year, the British Society of Couple Psychotherapists and Counsellors, our sponsoring organisation, threw a party in London to celebrate the Journal's launch. This occasion provided a welcome opportunity for me publicly to acknowledge the work of Sasha Brookes, as Editor of our predecessor publication, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Couple Work, in laying such firm foundations for future endeavours of this kind. In this issue of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis we are especially conscious of our debts to a number of forbears. Alongside this theme, several others have emerged in the contributions: those of unresolved conflict and the importance of mourning; the challenge of containing aggression in the consulting room; and the creative role of writing in processing the experiences we are asked to contain.

This issue's first and last articles each pay tribute to a notable contributor to our field. Brett Kahr introduces us to the work of John Carl Flügel, and Warren Colman offers a fond appreciation of the life and outstanding professional and personal legacy of Janet Mattinson. One of the poignant aspects of past lives richly lived is that we who follow on are often unaware of how much we owe our forbears. It is, thus, fascinating, and somewhat humbling, to read Flügel's illuminating chapter from 1935 on ‘Psychological Aspects of Marriage and the Family’ and to find insights on which we can still draw. Brett Kahr's researches remind us that in our clinical practice we share the historian's interest in identifying recurring patterns and dynamics, and in perceiving their echoes in the present.

In ‘Explorations with Families: A Model for Initial Family Therapy Meetings, Based on a Psychoanalytic Approach’, Sally Box explores the potential of a four-session consultation model in helping families caught up in unresolved conflict following the parental couple's separation. This work bears links with the time-limited model for couple psychotherapy describe