Editorial

When Couple and Family Psychoanalysis was conceived seven years ago, serious consideration was given to holding a symposium on ethics as a way of giving the Journal's work a secure base. As it happened, although the Editorial Board took time to discuss the ethical dimensions of the enterprise, the need to work on “getting into print” took precedence over the symposium. A further attempt to address ethical concerns directly came with the creation of Practitioners' Corner (Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, 1(2): 246-248; 2(1): 93-98) in which there could be discussion of clinical dilemmas encountered in practice. This endeavour, however, fell on stony ground because, in practice, it proved impossible to air concerns openly in any real way without risking the breach of patients' confidentiality. The decision to give priority in this issue to articles in which ethical matters are discussed is therefore a more substantive expression of the Editorial Board's continuing resolve to keep these principles in mind. While all five articles implicitly describe work undertaken in accordance with ethical codes, four of them explicitly engage with dilemmas that the ethical practitioner must address. The articles are prefaced by the Personal View of Alan Kubler, Editor of the Journal fort da. His reflective observations on the challenges of psychoanalytic writing helpfully lead us in to considering many of the issues that are encountered immediately on writing about our work.

“Working through” with patients in direct therapeutic work, is but one means of metabolising unresolved psychic pain and conflicts brought to psychotherapy. This might otherwise be done in supervision, in continuing analysis, or in the reflective process of writing. The Journal's call for articles on ethical issues clearly prompted the latter, with colleagues' reflections on how best to meet the continual requirement to act ethically and to do no harm. In this regard, the maxim coined by Bauriedl,”… the therapeu