Editorial

Soon After I was entrusted with the editorship of this Journal it became possible to shift most of the technical work connected with publication on to shoulders much broader, in this inflationary period, than those of the Society of Analytical Psychology, and the Academic Press became our publishers in 1980. A change of publishers always brings a trail of problems as regards subscription renewals; and unfortunately I was not able to give subscribers the advance warring they should have had that the method of renewing subscriptions was going to change. Whereas we despatched annual renewal forms separately during the autumn, Academic Press bind theirs in with the October issue each year, a detachable printed sheet in front of the contents page. The first of those forms was put into the issue which was out of our hands before the legal arrangements were complete and without our knowing it would be so. It has been surprising to discover, to our sad experience, how few otherwise competent people actually noticed the renewal form, filled it up and posted it with a cheque to the new address printed on the form. Many individual explanations have been offered to account for the reasons why the form was overlooked, each valid in its own way. As there has now been time to explore and find out more about the factors involved, the following observations may interest analytical psychologists.

Before Academic Press took over publication of The Journal, issues were often not available in the U.K. (and never overseas) during the month they were due. For a material reason, therefore, many subscribers did not notice for rather a long time that their copies had not arrived, and protests of non-receipt of copies took some time to reach us. Ironically, as it happened, all four 1980 issues were published punctually. Other factors come into subscribers not noticing: psychological ones. I picture most subscribers as very hard-working people; their work lies in attending to other people's com