Editorial

Although it may be a truism that the expansion of different types of psychotherapy invented and practiced has become unlimited and unregulated, the wide array of different psychotherapeutic modalities that have emerged from the psychoanalytic and psychodynamic traditions alone contribute to a state of confusion whereby both practitioners and patients struggle to keep up with the development of new therapies and iterations of existing psychotherapy modalities. The situation within the National Health Service in the UK may present a slightly less complex picture in that specific psychological treatments are increasingly likely to only be available if they can demonstrate sufficient empirical evidence for their effectiveness to convince commissioners to pay for them, and therefore the range of therapies on offer is more limited. Nevertheless, the original tripartite division of psychological therapies into cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic and systemic based on distinct theoretical frameworks, which has guided training and provision for many years, has been replaced, at least for the treatment of some conditions (e.g. personality disorder), by a multitude of newer modalities that combine elements from the original trio as well as other approaches, including the interpersonal and humanistic traditions.

Where does this leave psychoanalytic psychotherapy and its applications in the NHS, which is the specific remit of this journal? Arguably, when the journal was founded 35 years ago, there was less confusion than today in defining the theoretical framework and techniques of psychoanalytic psychotherapy (albeit allowing for differences based on the particular psychoanalytic school, usually within the British psychoanalytic community, informing the practitioner i.e. Kleinian, Independent and Contemporary Freudian traditions). However, in recent years, the descriptor ‘psychoanalytic’ has become increasingly replaced by ‘psychodynamic’, and although some might argue that the