Letter from the Editors

Dr. Mary B. McRae (2020) has submitted a commentary on a paper that was published in 2012 in this journal, in which a case study that she wrote (McRae, 2004) was discussed at length by Dr. Gregory Rizzolo (Rizzolo, 2012). Her name was consistently misspelled in the Rizzolo article, and the error was not caught prior to its publication. We have issued a correction, but we consider this an error that goes beyond the usual editorial oversights, and is resonant with meaning, both interpersonal and societal. The journal does not typically publish commentaries but will do so in this case.

By way of a brief overview of the commentary, Dr. McRae's (2020) essay seeks to address two points: (a) the implications of the misspelling of an African American author's name and (b) the theoretical points raised by Dr. Rizzolo (2012) in his piece about intersubjectivity and enactments, which included a critique of aspects of her work and inferences about her motivations.

Because Dr. McRae's name was misspelled, her work was not correctly cited; she was thus not aware of Dr. Rizzolo's (2012) critique for 7 years and was denied the opportunity to respond in a timely manner. The misspelling in itself raises the issue of the importance of names to an individual's identity and tradition, and the particular nature of these issues for an African American; the personal nature of Dr. Rizzolo's critique exacerbates the significance of the error.

There are larger social concerns inherent in this event that go beyond this particular error and touch on historical injustices and how to repair them. At the close of her commentary, Dr. McRae (2020) asks “how a journal of such high standing became complicit in this enactment” (p. 76). We cannot recover precisely the reviewing and editorial procedures at the time of the publication of Dr. Rizzolo's (2012) paper. Following this event, in order to minimize the chance of such a problem happening again, the review process of a paper critiquing the professiona