Bridging the gaps

I am sometimes asked about the future direction of the journal and what type of papers should be prioritised. Should we be aiming for more research articles describing empirical outcome studies of psychoanalytic psychotherapy that conform to the modern evidence-based scientific paradigm and are needed for the survival of our discipline; or should we focus on the more ‘traditional’ papers that explore psychoanalytic theories and conceptualisations in depth, their ‘evidence’ consisting of deductions from the complex and subtle exchanges and experiences between patient and therapist in the single-case study? These questions reflect, of course, a much wider debate about the nature and relevance of psychoanalytic research that extends well beyond our own Editorial Board and the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the NHS (APP) to the psychoanalytic psychotherapy community as a whole; but also demonstrate how this debate can be so often presented as a polarisation between proponents of the ‘traditionalist’ approach on the one hand, and the ‘modern empiricists’ on the other, a polarisation that effectively bypasses any thinking about the complexity of the issues under consideration.

A quick glance at previous issues of the journal on line (using modern technology which in itself provokes controversy, as discussed in the last Special Issue of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy on psychoanalysis and the Internet!) shows that these questions preoccupied Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from its inception. The journal's founding editor, Michael Sinason, recognised the importance of ‘bridging the gap’ between the methodology applied in scientific research in related fields such as neurobiology or psychology and the methods of clinical research in psychoanalysis, without undermining the importance of the latter (Sinason, 1985). Ten years later, the incoming editor, Jane Milton, echoing her predecessor in the post, Robin Anderson, writes in her debut editorial:

I would echo Robin