BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

EDITORIAL

Volume 12, Number 3, Spring 1996, pp.289-290

Having the conviction, as we do, that all of our human experience is composed of a mixture of reality and fantasy, how do we as therapists look upon memories that emerge in the process of psychotherapy? What is their historical status and truth value, of particular importance when the memories involve possible immoral or criminal actions from the past? This issue includes a special section prepared by Ann Scott on recovered memories of sexual abuse. She has brought together the views of an analytic psychotherapist, Fiona Gardner, with a review of the literature by Bessel van der Kolk and Rita Fisler from American sources where the recovered memory debate is more widespread. This review encompasses the nature of traumatic memory and amnesia in general, and PTSD in particular. It is introduced by Sandra Bloom who has been involved in the recovered memory debate for a number of years from the clinical and socio-historical aspects. In this section we have a response to these two papers by Professor John Morton, a cognitive psychology researcher on memory and co-author of the British Psychological Society position paper on recovered memories of sexual abuse.

Has an overriding emphasis on the transference eclipsed the notion of working alliance in modern-day analytic therapy? In a reappraisal of the concept of working alliance, Charlotte Wynn Parry and Diana Birkett look at attitudes towards it from the point of view of different schools and pick out Greenson's position as the most useful, arguing that the concept of working alliance is valuable for our practice and should not be overlooked. Next, we have an expl~ration of separation from the mother, couched in the context of Kristeva's 'necessity of matricide', presented in a paper by Christina Wieland. Without this symbolic murder in the service of individuation and development, melancholia and depression result, according to the Lacanian framework, and the 'law of the father' is not established in psychic reality. Wieland suggests a less violent solution in which the mother is not banished into the unconscious to reign as a bad object or lost traumatically, but allowed to exist as part of an internal couple by gradually working through oedipal anxieties.

No matter how orderly and scientific we attempt to be, argues David Black (and this includes our psychoanalytic investigation into subjectivity and the 'logic of the emotions'), at some point we inevitably step into the realm of values and the demand for priorities. In the Darwinian framework adopted by Freud, with the universe unfolding not according to a preconceived pattern, each moment of time becomes an opportunity for a creative act that welds together fact and value. Quoting Wittgenstein's metaphor ofphilosophy as a fly in the fly-bottle trying to get out, David Black suggestively provides a frame for a discussion of the current developments in genetic research. If we were a fly in a fly-bottle, the most creative solution would be to find the way out.

(end of page 289)

We have two offerings in this issue on psychoanalysis and literature. Bernardine Bishop writes of love and the good and bad object, internal and projected: Othello is more and more false to a true object and Desdemona remains true to a false one. Then, in the evolution that moves from infantile bondage in relation to a powerful and possessive woman towards an adult relationship between two individuals that protects each other's autonomy, Roland Pierloot writes of the role of the doll as a symbol, transitional object and catalyst in D.H. Lawrence's novella The Captain's Doll.

A 'Letter of Concern' was sent to the Journal last spring that pertains to the training and employment of gay and lesbian psychotherapists and an alleged prejudice within psychoanalytic theory against homosexual object choice. The Editorial Board has decided not to publish the letter within the pages of the Journal, but to include it as an insert in this issue. The BJP has a desire, and has traditionally endeavoured, to publish articles about professional matters in order to inform our readership about developments in the field, including recent political matters such as the formation of the UKCP and the BCP. However, with each new generation of editorship there will be new perspectives, and it is my intention to make distinctions, to attempt to draw a line between reports that vitally educate or inform and material engaging with political campaigns, that are more appropriate to a newsletter. As an independent, unaligned journal, we believe the strength of the Journal is to remain broadly based, considering for publication articles on all forms of psychotherapy. Our pluralistic world requires that we devise ways of dealing with differences and negotiating conflicts, both internally and externally, so that we build better, more sophisticated structures. Thus, we wish to carry forward the debate about homophobia within psychotherapy in a positive way, and we will present articles in the near future that attempt to enable thinking about this issue. We encourage our readership to submit papers that examine the various aspects of theory and practice regarding homosexuality.