Editorial

The final stages of preparation for this issue of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis were completed after the onset of the worldwide coronavirus crisis, which has imposed on us, as individuals and as societies, radical transformation and multiple losses in lives, treasure, time, and collegial and personal relationships. Those of us who work from a psychoanalytic perspective recognise that such losses activate deeply held anxieties about the breakdown of the containing capacities of both intimate relationships and social, cultural, and political institutions. In turn, these anxieties have triggered, in our patients and in the social fabric, such primitive defences as denial, retreat, manic displacement, splitting, and, in Fornari's terms, the “paranoid elaboration of mourning” (1975, p. xviii).

Given these developments, it is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit that we in the psychotherapeutic community have continued our work, acting on faith that our methods and perspectives retain their value as guides for a world beset by illnesses both physical and psychological. (As Camus said in The Plague, “[W]hat we learn in time of pestilence [is] that there are more things to admire in men than to despise” (1947, p. 287).) I have found this same steadfast dedication in everyone who has contributed to this issue's creation.

In an effort to distribute workload, the journal's editorial board in 2019 asked its members to consider acting as guest editors for select issues. I volunteered, and as I settled into the role for this issue I discovered something essential: a journal is assembled by a large collection of individuals who work together as a coordinated, synergistic team. The team with whom I had the privilege of working, which included the past and present editors-in-chief Molly Ludlam and Christopher Clulow, the book and arts reviews editors Krisztina Glausius and Perrine Moran, members of the editorial and international advisory boards, independent peer r