Editor's Farewell

This issue of contemporary psychoanalysis, my last as editor-in-chief, embodies the qualities that I and the editorial staff of the journal have sought. We have tried to expand the range of psychoanalytic thinking to include ignored, difficult, or controversial topics, weaving together interpersonal, intrapsychic, and cultural perspectives. We begin this issue with an exploration of psychoanalytic work by Mary Brady with a gay teenager, as she struggled to escape the shackles of disinformation she had acquired during her training and find a fresh approach. We continue this theme with Chana Ullman's description of her work with a gay man, also analyzing the effect of her personal values and the cultural unconscious, with an interesting sidelight on disguise and confidentiality. Abby Stein provides an insightful analysis of counter-transferential and public reactions to sex offenders, with startling facts about how leniently the law treats intrafamilial incest. Steven Tublin explores the dilemma of how to conduct a treatment within the paradoxical confinement of postmodern not-knowingness. That is followed by an interview with Bruce Fink that is a “guide for the perplexed” about Lacan. Finally, there is a series of articles on how Interpersonal psychoanalysis has shaped contemporary approaches to clinical issues.

During my years as editor, I have tried to include articles that other journals avoided. It is easy to publish articles that describe treatments that work out happily, and there is no shortage of them. But we have published articles by psychoanalysts who were also patients in which the analytic process went awry: an analyst who severely broke confidentiality and refused to acknowledge responsibility for it (Burka, 2008), and an analyst who crossed a sexual boundary with a patient and never discussed it with her (Dimen, 2011). Both articles generated enormous discussion. If psychoanalysts do not speak up about misconduct in our field, who will? And if no one wi