With Gratitude: A Brief Editorial History

The launching of most professional publications is usually placed in the capable, time-tested hands of well-known and beloved figures in the field. Being an innovative venture, untroubled by convention or any excessive knowledge of the practicalities of business, Psychoanalytic Perspectives and its champions at NIP-TI did not consult the handbook when convening its first editorial quartet. To my good fortune, the process went something like this: one day, somebody said, “Who wants to be an editor?” and four of us said, “I do, I do, I do,” and “I think I do.” A brief pre-history to this nomination process: Judy Greenwald, then-president of NIP PA, had been doing some inspired thinking. Out of her reflections emerged a journal-planning board of ten (or so) writerly analysts. After some months of heady brainstorming, the collective determined that a journal takes a lot of work, which was quickly followed by the communal consensus, “We need someone to run this thing.”

Thus began my five-year tour of duty as co-editor of our dear journal. New kid on the psychoanalytic block, wide-eyed and worried, I took heart in the good company of three “co-inspirators”—journal founder Judith Becker Greenwald, Sheldon Itzkowitz and Mary Sussillo—each of whom added to the mix his or her own inimitable blend of vision, talent and uncertainty. Being the relative rookies on a team of hard-hitting, experienced clinicians and analytic writers, I fearfully fantasized finding ourselves at the head of a puppet regime, editors in name only who were, in truth, only administrators with a fancy title.

My phantasmagoria was not entirely unfounded. While dreaming our big dreams, we also had the privilege of scrubbing pots, changing flat tires, welding broken pipes, and climbing up on the roof to fix the cable wire, then climbing back on down to hand-address the party invitations—or something along those lines. With neither frame nor infrastructure already in place, we found ourselves hobbling together