You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
There can be little doubt of the importance of the subjects this association and its new journal address—the application of psychoanalytical theory and practice to psychotherapeutic settings beyond the strictly psychoanalytic, and to all those situations and aspects of medical work—therapeutic, the management of institutions, relationships between professionals and patients and between professional workers themselves, and many others where the understandings psychoanalysts can bring resolve or reduce conflict and increase efficiency. In his editorial, Sinason lists the variety of these settings. The subject is very wide and may in this kind of publication produce the same kind of impression of there being so many different possible aims to pursue as to produce confusion, as is faced by the consultant psychotherapist himself in N.H.S. work, a confusion that the therapist in his work seeks to reduce by specializing, limiting his attention to specific areas. In future issues this impression might be reduced by classifying papers and placing them in clearly defined sections.
In this issue there are eight papers, the first four making general statements about how the psychoanalytic psychotherapist should or may operate in the N.H.S., one related paper on how he should be trained, and three discussing different aspects of clinical work. The level of the writing and of the detailed editing varies considerably between the papers, seeming to reflect the experience of the different authors, and that a strict editorial discipline has yet to be imposed. While the aim of providing a forum where discussion can be free is laudable, simple spelling mistakes, the wrong use of particular words, and obscurities and idiosyncracies of expression produce an air of naïveté and carelessness which makes factual material less convincing. Experienced writers like Freeman and Coltart and Steiner produce satisfying papers because their styles are spare; they use simple words and expression