Editorial

There are Several earlier editorial notes behind this one: by Michael Fordham on launching this Journal in 1955; by him in January 1971, when he announced his retirement from the editorship; by A. B. J. Plaut when he took over in July 1971; by myself in April 1977, when I joined Plaut; and he wrote a valedictory one in January 1979. I am now writing to say that I have completed my term of office.

It would certainly be easy to construct an impressive piece from quotations selected from those earlier editorials. It is not only that they contained passages well worth quoting about the editor's policies, aims, hopes, reflections, forecasts; it is also that it would be congenial to hide behind important predecessors, particularly since what they did offered me a model I was very willing to use. But I will resist the temptation: rather do I recommend readers to turn back to them and obtain for themselves an overview of the first thirty years of the life of this very lively Journal, which attracts talented authors, reviewers and dedicated workers in the background. I will also try to resist the other temptations: to turn a skilful phrase, to express unimpeachable sentiments, fine thoughts or impressive truths. They are all versions of hiding.

A psychological journal, and indeed particularly this Journal, since it specialises in papers based on clinical experience, attracts the skills and darts of its subscribers, its worldwide readers. The contributors and those on the editorial side are, in a way, laying themselves on the line. Authors may choose to present the material out of which the paper was made in a direct, descriptive, way. That approach may load them with subtle problems of confidentiality, which have beset analysts of all kinds since psychoanalysis began. Or they may discover how to extract and abstract from the lived sessions, in order to communicate to their readers what analytical psychology is, or is becoming, and what they themselves are and do. A balance, or