Editor's Introduction

This hallmark double issue of Volume 6 for 2023 introduces new contributors from Tongji University's Department of Psychology for our special sections on philosophy and psychoanalysis and on the department's contributions to clinical thinking. The collaboration is the first of its kind for the journal, and I am personally pleased and grateful to the members of the department for their generous and thoughtful contributions, as well as to the wonderful collaboration of Ju Fei and Liu Zixiao as guest editors of the issue.

We begin, however, with analytic contributions that are the strongest showing yet in the journal of contributions from Chinese colleagues and contributors. Caroline Sehon's collaboration with two of her students illustrates crucial moments in teaching analytic child therapy to the class of therapists in the programme offered by the International Psychotherapy Institute together with its Chinese partner, Jiandanxinli. Zhong Jie, who has published before in the journal, gives an important piece reviewing the history of analytic thinking on narcissism, and ending with his own contributions to that theory. Cai Chenghou (who has also published in the journal) and Shen Heyong write on new ways of thinking about how Chinese culture can contribute to treating the mass mental health consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. And, in the final piece of this section, Chinese colleagues Wu Xiaowei and Xie Beili team up with David and Jill Scharff and Janine Wanlass to illustrate the careful evaluation and therapeutic trial of the case of a twelve-year-old boy and his parents.

The first special section leads off with Ju Fei's own piece on the careful reading of clinical material. This is followed by an important piece on the “hollow disease” of Chinese university students, and then by Lu Zijuan's discussion of diagnosis in psychoanalysis and psychiatry.

The second special section is devoted to more philosophical considerations that expand our analytic thinking and concep