Editorial

We are very sorry to announce that Meira Likierman has stepped down as Assistant Editor, as after a period in the post she realised she would not be able to take on the substantially greater level of work involved as Joint Editor. Meira will nevertheless remain as an editorial board member, and we are pleased to be able to have her continuing input to the journal. We are, however, extremely pleased to announce that Viviane Green has taken on the position of Assistant Editor with a view to becoming Joint Editor on Janine Sternberg's retirement. Viviane brings a wealth of editorial, writing and academic experience to her new role, and it is a particular pleasure to have a future editor from the Anna Freud tradition.

This edition is a themed issue on the subject of narcissism. We have followed the same format as the previous themed issue (Volume 31, Issue 1), which consists of a commentary on a classic paper on the subject – in this case Freud's seminal paper on narcissism – as an introduction to a collection of clinical papers variously exploring the subject. In this way, readers have a conceptual reference point and context for the clinical material and accompanying theoretical framework of the articles that follow. The clinical papers on narcissism illustrate some of the ways in which clinicians continue to make use of

Freud's formulations as well as elaborations of these by other writers, especially Rosenfeld's idea of destructive narcissism. The case histories in all three clinical papers on narcissism are about adolescents, and this is no coincidence: it reflects in part the close connection between narcissistic phenomena and adolescence as a developmental stage, a theme elucidated in two of the papers. A related point is that all the clinical cases discussed in detail in these articles involve young people in late adolescence, on the threshold of adulthood – a critical juncture in development where profound narcissistic disturbance makes the transition to adult