Editorial

It will not have escaped the attention of Free Association subscribers and readers that the journal has been appearing irregularly for some time. This is because we have been short of money and have appeared when we could. This, in turn, is because our co-publishing agreement with Guilford in the US came to an end. Behind all this, we surmise, is a sense that psychoanalytic people have been pulling in their horns in the relatively bleak clinical situation where too many therapists are chasing too few patients.

We believe that, on the contrary, this is a time when the broader and deeper articulations of psychoanalysis are even more relevant. The so-called Freud Wars are about whether or not the more profound and moral aspects of human nature are to be given due attention. The Freud bashers are frankly opting for a more bahavioural and less searching approach to human nature and the alleviation of human distress. In fact, recent research has shown that psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy work well and that severely disturbed people do better if psychotherapy complements their drug treatments. These issues have been insightfully and searchingly aired in a new book, Of Two Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry by T. M. Luhrmann (N. Y.:  Knopf, 2000). She also argues that the growing split between organic and psychotherapeutic approaches is a disaster for the human spirit. There is also a number of essays reflecting on these matters at the Human-Nature.com web site.

Our particular crisis has been solved for the foreseeable future. Karnac Books has agreed to publish the journal (which Process Press continues to own) for at least five years. It will now appear regularly and on time, and subscribers will get all the copies for which they paid. This would be a good moment to encourage institutional libraries to subscribe and to persuade colleagues to do so. We are grateful to our loyal subscribers and readers and are glad that we held out and have endur