Editorial

It is a tremendous privilege to edit a journal and so it is with much excitement, albeit accompanied by some trepidation, that I am taking over the Editorship of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from my predecessor in this role Alessandra Lemma. Alessandra is an extraordinarily gifted writer, researcher and clinician, and these qualities have been very evident in her inspirational leadership of the journal over the past three years. She has not only successfully steered the journal through very difficult times, but during her tenure she has also enabled the journal to grow both quantitatively and qualitatively, evidenced by an increase in the number of excellent papers submitted to the journal and a corresponding expansion of its readership.

This is remarkable given the ongoing challenges, and even hostility from certain quarters, presented by the external environment towards psychoanalytic thinking. These challenges are particularly acute in the UK where public sector services are currently facing unprecedented cuts in funding coinciding with a major reorganization of the ways in which services are commissioned to produce a climate in which psychoanalytic psychotherapy services have been arguably disadvantaged more than others. I am therefore very grateful to Alessandra not only for ensuring the survival of the journal but also for handing over one that is thriving through the scope and excellence of its papers. It seems to me more pressing than ever that we should continue to build on the work of Alessandra and her colleagues to make certain that Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy persists as a unique forum in which the voices, discussions and debates of all those interested in psychoanalytic ideas and their applications to the public sector can be heard.

With any changeover of editors, there is also inevitably some movement in the composition of the Editorial Boards. After many years of dedicated work for the journal, Marilyn Lawrence, Golan Shahar, Julia Fabricius, Richard