Editorial

As this issue goes to press, we anticipate an interesting ACP conference on violence and children and look forward, in May, to the Athens conference of the EFPP on the theme of transference and countertransference. Readers who attend conferences and study-days around the world may like to keep the Journal in mind, encouraging authors to submit papers for consideration where they feel an area of interest to Journal readers has been elaborated. In this way we hope to enable a lively discussion and sharing of ideas across geographical and theoretical divides.

Having begun Volume 20 with the Special Issue on Autism, we continue the Journal year with a general issue. The papers cover a range of topics, including research, issues of motherhood and mothering, and clinical case studies.

We are delighted to publish the paper ‘Early aspects of mothering’ by Erna Furman, a member of our recently formed Advisory Board. Building on a lifetime of experience of working with mothers and their children, and elaborating on ideas from her many previous publications, Furman considers the various states of mind of mothers faced with separation from their child, either through bereavement or through the child's normal developmental process of individuation. The mother's emotional experiences of separation are explored in relation to bodily states and to the variety of defences used to cope with the sense of loss, and comparison is made between mothers’ and fathers’ experiences of the child's moves towards independence. This paper discusses the range from normality to pathology, and offers insight into some developmental aspects of mothering. Lynda Ellis’ paper, ‘Psychic diffusion and captive minds: the possibilities for and limitations of therapy with children of invasive mothers’, complements the Furman article by focusing on the difficulties encountered by the therapist in working with patients who are enmeshed in a