Editorial

A sense of history reverberates through this issue of the Journal. In the past year, several eminent colleagues have passed away: in addition to recently published obituaries of Kate Newton and Peter Homans, in this issue we publish three more obituaries: Bill McGuire, the Jungian scholar who edited the Freud/Jung Letters amongst other achievements and two prominent members of the Society of Analytical Psychology—Rushi Ledermann, well known for her seminal papers on narcissism and Fred Plaut, former Editor of this Journal whose numerous influential and varied publications extended over more than 60 years. As well as an extensive obituary, we are also republishing Andrew Samuels' interview with Fred Plaut, first published in the Journal in 1989, which has now become a historical document in itself, detailing not only Fred's own life and career but his reflections on Jung and the history of Jungian analysis, particularly the early days of the Society of Analytical Psychology. Less well known to Journal readers was the New York analyst, Yoram Kaufman, who is remembered in a review of his first book, published only a week before he died in July 2009.

In this issue, too, we mark the publication of Jung's Liber Novus (the ‘Red Book’), undoubtedly one of the most significant events in Jungian history, with an interview in which Sonu Shamdasani, the editor and driving force behind the publication, discusses with Ann Casement its historical significance — and the significance of a historical perspective for understanding Jung's work. Over a decade of dedicated work by Professor Shamdasani and his colleagues came to fruition with the well-publicised launch of the Red Book in New York in October and in London in November last year. As he says, it will take a considerable time to absorb the implications of this truly seminal work of Jung's: we will be publishing a Critical Notice of Liber Novus by Murray Stein in the June 2010 edition of the Journal and plans are proceeding to d