International Review of Psycho-Analysis

This part of the International Review, the final part of its nineteenth volume, will be the last. From 1993, when the International Journal is to begin publication six times a year and will include articles on the full range of psychoanalytic topics, both pure and applied, there will no longer be the special place for the Review that it has occupied since its foundation by Joseph Sandler in 1974. Articles on psychoanalytic history, psychoanalytic method, psychoanalytic methodology and the application of psychoanalysis to other scientific disciplines, literature, the arts and to psychotherapy will in future all be published in the Journal so that publication can reflect all of the very best work in the field, no matter its topic.

Since 1974 when the launch of the International Review was an exciting and highly innovative initiative, the scope of all the leading psychoanalytic journals has changed—partly, we believe as the result of the example of the International Review and the high standard of articles that have been found in it. It is now commonplace to find articles on training, history and applied psychoanalysis—the three main distinctive areas—in journals such as the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Other articles, such as the careful reviews of conceptual development published this year by authors such as Friedman (pages 189–196 and 309–322), Makari (pages 415–432) or Rizzuto (pages 169–177) along with the several highly fascinating discussions of the history and background to the Strachey translation of Freud's work, could equally have appeared within the pages of the Journal. Such developments mean that while the Review has achieved critical acclaim (see Chasseguet Smirgel, 1991; Wallerstein, 1991 and Schwartz, 1991, all published in the Special Issue of Volume 18), it has had the effect of creating artificial and arbitrary divisions within our subject which have the potential to inhibit scholarship and interdisciplinary cross-fertiliz