Editorial

This issue of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy contains three papers which indicate the broad scope of our approach within the public sector. Lanman vividly describes the interest and challenge of working analytically in the field of student counselling. She looks not only at the straightforward front-line work with the students themselves in a small hard-pressed service, but also considers the necessity of thinking about the relationship to the larger institution, in order that the projections that inevitably occur can be used creatively. Hopkins reviews the place of psychotherapeutic interventions in infancy, and contributes cases from her own clinical experience in which a series of consultations attending to family dynamics led to a dramatic improvement in two small persistently-crying babies. Finally, Gravestock & McGauley contribute to the relatively new literature on psychoanalytic psychotherapy in patients with learning disabilities, in this case via a vivid description of a therapeutic group.

Garelick's paper draws on years of clinical experience of assessment for psychotherapy, and includes a historical survey of the subject. From the opposite end of the spectrum, Langenbach gives the fresh view of a trainee taking on his first assessment for child psychotherapy. Stern systematically researches, by interviewing referrers, the reasons behind referrals to a psychotherapy department within a large postgraduate institution. His findings bear out clinical impressions that referrals are caused not simply by clinical considerations but also by complex institutional and countertransference factors.

Lastly, we are pleased to have a contribution from Sweden which is relevant to our own current concerns in the public sector. Szecsödy reviews critically the upheavals facing psychotherapy provision and training in the context of major health-service reorganisation.