Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

It is with great pride, excitement, anticipation, and humility that I, as founding editor, in joint effort with the executive board, launch our Journal in this millennium year. The brainchild of developing a new, psychodynamically based child journal seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom, when the psychodynamic perspective itself is under such vicious attack from so many different quarters. This is compounded by the fact that most practitioners are under pressure from third-party regulators to focus only on target-symptom reduction. These and other antagonistic forces have the effect of fomenting suspicion about the therapeutic utility of psychodynamically based treatments, as well as casting a persecuting shadow on those who continue to practice it. We have undertaken a labor of three years to bring this Journal into being because of our steadfast belief that the psychoanalytically informed orientation is of significant value to practicing clinicians and their patients. Since the first child psychoanalyst, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, published her initial clinical paper in 1912 (Maclean and Rappen 1991), child psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy of the child have developed as a subspecialty of psychoanalysis, requiring their own separate training standards. Currently, however, there is a critical lack of psychodynamically informed child therapy journals (Seligman 1997). The primary mission of the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy is to fill this void. JICAP was conceived and designed with several objectives in mind. The first was to develop a psychodynamically based forum for the exploration and cross-fertilization of clinical theory and practice. Through this study (examination?) of divergent views, the Journal would serve as a means of enhancing the clinical practice of infant, child, and adolescent psychotherapy. To accomplish this task, we took note of Mitchell’s (1991) characterization of our present communication status as “ironic,” because, despite their status as Western culture’s most “highly trained and refined communicators . . . psychoanalysts have enormous difficulty listening and speaking meaningfully to each other” (p. 1). It is my contention that Mitchell’s observation is immediately applicable to the general field of psychotherapy, regardless of the analyst’s theoretical orientation. If analysts do not speak meaningfully to each other, then the question remains: How do they converse? What are the ground rules for listening —the basis for the professional “psychoanalytic frame”? (Langs 1977, p. 42). The ground rules for analysts and psychotherapists with different theoretical orientations seem to be a social etiquette of either polite tolerance or a polite avoidance of one another. (Sklar 2000). This standard seems to fly in the face of Adams’ (1996) characterization of psychoanalysis as not only a talking cure but also a “listening cure” (p. 1). Langs would contend that in order to listen effectively one must understand the frame of psychoanalytic discourse. Such a reflection on our ground rules might portray a history of being embedded in an either-or posture that too often frames our work in oppositional stances. This Journal is a forum for re-framing and expanding the frame, so that a more constructive and creative dialogue can occur. The purpose is not a naive wish to do away with theoretical differences, as if such a false commonality or unification of knowledge would serve any useful purpose. Murray (1970) offers a perspective that captures our sense of what we hope to provide by this position: “Seldom does unanimity stop with a simple yes or no. A concurring yes, that is to say, is not only a dissenting no to a different set of yeses but may also be a modification or adaptation that rephrases an JOURNAL OF INFANT, CHILD, AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHOTHERAPY 2022, VOL. 21, NO. 1, 3–5 https://doi.org/10.1080/15289168.2022.2050657