Editors' Introduction

Readers may well have noticed that the title of our Journal has changed. Our original hyphenated name, Neuro-Psychoanalysis, has—after 10 years—become Neuropsychoanalysis, reflecting current practice in spelling. Those with an interest in the historical significance of such matters should note that we have moved far more rapidly than the British Psycho-Analytical Society, which took almost 80 years to transform itself into the British Psychoanalytical Society, with a similar time period for the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis to become the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

This modification to our title is a move that some will view as of no great concern, and others may view as of great symbolic significance. Those in the “no great concern” camp will note that many neuroscientific fields manage perfectly well without hyphenated boundary demarcations—we have neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry, neuroanatomy, neuropharmacology, and so forth. Those in the “of great symbolic significance” camp may choose to note that the disciplines will have moved together by the distance of a hyphen—perhaps an index of progress in closer collaboration between our two fields?

Target Article

This issue is largely devoted to the topic of depression. The Target Article, by Douglas Watt and Jaak Panksepp—“Depression: An Evolutionarily Conserved Mechanism to Terminate Separation Distress? A Review of Aminergic, Peptidergic, and Neural Network Perspectives”—is monograph-like, in length as well as in content. It covers the huge domain of history, anatomy, and biochemistry of depression, and even its diverse forms of therapy, some of which are at the cutting edge and experimental. In doing this the article offers a wonderful tutorial review for the reader new to the field, as well as offering much that is new for the reader more familiar with this area of research.

The basic hypothesis is one derived from the field of evolutionary psychiatry. The authors propose that dep