Editorial

We are glad to present, as the first issue of 1995, an international issue with papers from Australia, Belgium, France and Italy. Although making this a special issue has perhaps encouraged authors from further afield to contribute, we hope that this flow of contributions will continue and that the Journal will achieve a regular international flavour as a matter of course. Thank you to all the many people who have sent in contributions.

It is a pleasure to announce in this issue that the Advisory Board has been joined by the eminent Hungarian psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and child psychiatrist Dr Georgy Vikar. Dr Vikar is a training analyst in the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society in Budapest and we are delighted to receive his support and to develop connections with Hungary.

As this issue goes to press (in November 1994) we anticipate this month a fruitful Journal Annual General Meeting with members of the Advisory Board, representatives from Routledge, past editors, members of the ACP Executive and the Journal Editorial Committee. This, our first AGM, will be an annual event which we hope will stimulate more thinking on the development and direction of the Journal. It is also an opportunity to thank our Advisory Board members for their support throughout the year.

Papers in this issue represent a range of issues for child psychotherapists, but it is interesting that several of them focus on severely disturbed patients and very early experience.

The first paper in this issue focusing on very early experience is Alessandra Piontelli's account of the analysis of a 4-year-old psychotic adopted boy. Abandoned a few days after birth and then subjected to severe cumulative trauma, Antonino's development was seriously disturbed by the time he was adopted and started analysis. The description of the therapy highlights most vividly and poignantly how Antonino seemed to be trying desperately to recapture the sensory experience of attachment to his biological mother — the lost an