A Farewell from Oliver Turnbull

It has been a wonderful privilege to serve in an Editorial capacity for Neuropsychoanalysis over this past decade. I am stepping aside for two principal reasons. The first of these is that I have a number of new commitments and obligations in my home institution—and it is frankly impossible for me to keep up with the demands of a senior management position in a university and still do justice to my role as Editor of the journal. A second reason, perhaps the more important, is that a decade in an Editorial post is a long time, and it is in the best interests of any journal that someone with fresh ideas, and an injection of new energy, takes over the position.

During the past decade, I have worked as part of a large academic team: my list would clearly include—in rough chronological order—Mark Solms, Ed Nersessian, Irene Matthis, Doug Watt, Yoram Yovell, Maggie Zellner, Bonnie Smolen, Janet Baird, David Olds, Peter Freed, Georgina Torbet, Heather Berlin, and Robin Carhart-Harris. One of the unexpected joys of the role has been that so many on that list have become close personal friends, as well as (in the case of Yoram and David, as Co-Editors) a helpful source of support when faced with difficult decisions.

Looking back, I would regard the most rewarding element of the role the opportunity to shape—in practical terms, paper by paper—the nature of the journal and thus, in some respects, our field. This has involved a day-to-day set of small but important decisions: the warm acceptance of papers; striving to craft a diplomatic letter of rejection; the problem-solving activity of shepherding comments of our Reviewers into practical advice to authors; and, at times, offering encouragement to those with substantial enthusiasm but little publication experience. It is also about encounters, by email or phone or at conferences, with as diverse a range of scientists and clinicians as one might hope to encounter. From these, I have learned a great deal about who our readership