Editorial

Now that the UK and the USA editors have settled into their collaboration—which seems to be working well and really promises to be mutually enriching—I feel it might be helpful if I reiterate the Journal's policy and goals. I do not think they have diverged in any important way from the points I made in my editorial in October 1986, and I know they have the full accord of our American co-editors.

I still hope and intend to continue to encourage as much as possible debate, discussion, controversy, and confrontation in the pages of the Journal. Indeed I would like the Journal to be used as a real forum. I believe that, in order to reflect the general intellectual climate of the time and keep readers in touch with developments of both theory and clinical practice in analytical psychology, we need to maintain an open approach as regards theories and concepts in our choice of papers. This depends on our being able to rely on ‘comments’ and ‘letters’ to redress or balance any particularly challenging, novel, or unusual thesis. However, clarity of thought, argument, and expression remain our principal requirement.

Apart from the major papers—of between 4000 and 8000 words (and authors, please remember to end each paper with a summary and a list of references) — we certainly also welcome ‘short notes’ or ‘memoranda’, so that some new thought, idea, insight, hypothesis, or some apparently novel clinical experiences, even if they have not yet been fully worked out, can be communicated to and shared with colleagues and readers of the Journal.

We aim to select for each issue some of those papers that seem to treat the same or a related theme, although, of course, this is not always possible. But this does mean that sometimes papers do not get published in the order in which they have been submitted to us.

We shall always find a place in the Journal for ‘letters to the editor’, in which you can let us know of any request or suggestion, or express criticism, disagreement, or disappro