Editors' Introduction

We continue the discussion of controversial topics raised in previous issues. In the following pages will be found stimulating papers on the Borderline Personality (Claudio Revere); Biologic and Deficit Theory (Richard Kessler); Eating Disorders (Margery Adelson); Medication (the Wylies); Psychoanalytic Education (Joshua Levy).

We have no doubt that our readers will find Dr. Revere's paper controversial, representing as it does the application of psychoanalytic ideas to the preparatory psychotherapy of a severely disturbed patient: Also, the psychoanalytic ideas themselves might be more familiar to our South American colleagues than to those of us in North America. Yet we found the resulting therapeutic application to near-psychotic states, and the distinctions made between such therapy and psychoanalysis proper, to be clearly stated.

We also introduce in this issue some new formats which may in themselves be controversial: the Tutorial Section, and the Roundtable Book Review.

For our Tutorial Section, we have taken a paper, which ordinarily would not have been accepted for publication in its current form, and subjected it to a discussion in which the problems of the paper are analyzed by one of our editors. Like most editors, we receive many papers, which our reviewers do not recommend for publication. Instead of continuing to turn these down behind the scenes, as it were, we thought it might be both interesting and instructive to share with our readers (and prospective authors) an example of our critical process. For this we have selected a paper which, although problematic, is both stimulating and, in our opinion, representative of current controversial errors. In this case the problem is in our opinion the inappropriate reference to putative infantile states. We are grateful to our colleague Dr. Aaron Esman for contributing his scientific and educational expertise to this effort. We are particularly indebted to the author of the paper, Robert T. Waska, for gracious