Submission of Manuscript

Dr. Andrew Smolar leaves a voice mail message for Dr. Wyman asking to discuss a proposed new manuscript. Dr. Wyman asks Dr. Smolar to e-mail a description of the manuscript, which follows later the same day.

E-mail from Andrew Smolar, M.D.

Dear Dr. Wyman,

Thanks so much for returning my call today. It is difficult for therapists to connect by phone, and e-mail is a helpful medium.

I wondered whether the Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis would be an appropriate venue for a manuscript I have prepared. The paper is entitled “In the Crucible: The Negative Transference with Incest Survivors.” The paper is divided into two parts. The first part describes the treatment process of two cases. The first is a psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy conducted one to two times weekly; the second a psychoanalysis of four sessions per week. Both describe the blossoming of the negative transference. The process description emphasizes transference-countertransference enactments, underlining the special pressures facing the therapist in such cases. As you can imagine, these two cases did not go smoothly, and in fact I am forthright about the errors which, in hindsight, I think I committed. (For example, I conducted one session of deep-relaxation therapy with one of the patients which induced a significant regression.) The second part of the paper is theoretical, and outlines guidelines for technique in managing the negative transference with abused patients.

My reluctance in submitting the paper to your Journal is twofold: The data from the first case are not derived from a psychoanalysis. If this is not appropriate for your Journal, do you have ideas for whom it might be appropriate?

My second pause for thought surrounds the fact that I submitted it to another well-known psychoanalytic journal and they rejected it for vague reasons. As far as I could tell (I honestly could not understand the reviews, and the editor could not clarify them for me), they objected to my fr