Editor's Introduction

This is the first of two special issues that feature papers drawn from the First Chinese National Congress on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, organised online jointly by the International Psychoanalytical Association's Committee on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (COFAP) and the Beijing Zhi-Dao-Zhong-He Medical Institute in Beijing. This was COFAP's first online congress, necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic that made it impossible for committee members to travel to China. That unhappy circumstance, however, also created an opportunity for innovation, and its partners at the Beijing Zhi-Dao-Zhong-He Medical Institute demonstrated admirable creativity in building a structure for the congress, helping to recruit Chinese contributors, and administering a remarkable affair. The resulting collaboration produced a remarkable mixture of Western and Chinese contributions, and a large and appreciative Chinese audience.

In this and the following issue, we print many of the papers that were presented there. The Western contributions present ideas developed in some of the most important centres in the United States, South America, and Europe. Whilst many of these presentations are based on experience outside of China, they offer ideas that need to be brought to China for testing in the Chinese context. Indeed, several of these presenters, including Damian McCann, Christopher Clulow, Elizabeth Palacios, and Monica Vorchheimer, have taught with me in China and are well aware of both similarities and differences in Chinese and Western contexts for families and couples. Then there are also papers by Chinese contributors who have the Chinese context in their bones, with the result that the mixture of articles in this issue represents a unique combination, a mixing bowl in which diverse psychoanalytic perspectives are offered with the hope that they will now be tested in China by Chinese therapists.

The issue leads off with a paper on analytic concepts useful in couple therapy, aut