Abstract
I am delighted and humbled to have been chosen as the next editor of JAPA, the historic venue for such writers as Margaret Mahler, Heinz Kohut, and Erik Erikson, among so many other pioneering contributors, and still one of the world’s leading outlets for psychoanalytic scholarship. Since its origins in 1953, the journal has published work that has shaped theory and practice in North America and abroad. We have also expanded considerably. Once considered a bastion of ego psychology, we now publish thought-provoking work from every major school of thought. We are—and we aspire to remain—a place where the best minds in our field gather to present original arguments, to articulate differences, and to engage with questions at the heart of psychoanalysis.
In taking over the role from Mitchell Wilson, who led JAPA for the past 5 years, I am aware not only of how much he and his team achieved, but also of how they set us up to thrive in the years ahead. During his tenure, Mitch was known for his transparent and decisive leadership, his open-mindedness, and his subtlety, both as a writer and as an editor, with a talent for drawing out an author’s voice. Countless writers, including me, can attest to the work he did to bring our papers to life with a texture, a nuance, and often a note of courage not present in the first draft. In addition to his work on spontaneous submissions, Mitch demonstrated the journal’s ability to foreground key conversations through issues on race in psychoanalysis, the enigmatic role of Lacan in American psychoanalysis, and the status of interpretation in contemporary clinical theory. While there are many ways to measure success, perhaps the simplest measure is JAPA’s Impact Factor, which gauges the journal’s relevance on the basis of scholarly citations. For the majority of Mitch’s editorship, JAPA maintained the highest Impact Factor of any psychoanalytic journal.
I would also like to recognize Harold Blum, editor of JAPA from 1973 to 1983 and former director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, who passed in March of this year. Dr. Blum, who published nearly 200 scientific papers, and who was one of the inaugural winners of the Sigourney Award, had a significant impact on our thinking about defense analysis, the nature of interpreting (or reconstructing) the past, female psychology, and a wide range of topics in art and literature. During his time at JAPA, he published works by Arlow, Brenner, Kernberg, and others whose work characterized American psychoanalysis in the second half of the 20th century. When I was first appointed to this new role, Dr. Blum emailed to congratulate me and offer his help if I ever needed it. “I readily empathize with your new position,” he wrote, “a wonderful opportunity, never devoid of complexities and debate.” When we later met at the APsA meetings in February, I got the sense of a warm and generous man with a quick intelligence. In the words of colleague Irene Cairo, he was a truly lovely human being, and his was a life well lived.
As we look to the future, we find a number of exciting challenges ahead. We have seen a great expansion in the kinds of submissions we receive. They come from all parts of the world, representing a wide variety of perspectives and focusing on a range of clinical, theoretical, and empirical questions. To accommodate this growth, we have broadened our base of reviewers and have formed specialty panels to consult on papers that require unique expertise beyond analytic training. These panels focus on child development, psychoanalytic education, race in psychoanalysis, neuroscience, empirical research on personality disorders, and psychoanalysis in the social sciences. Each panel is led by an associate editor with significant expertise. They are Anne Erreich (child development), Alan Sugarman (education), Kris Yi (race in psychoanalysis), Virginia Barry (neuroscience), Diana Diamond (personality disorders), and Kathryn Schechter (social sciences). We are working, in addition, to form a new panel for papers on gender and sexuality. By reinforcing and expanding our in-house expertise, our goal is to provide writers who submit papers in each area with the highest quality feedback available in psychoanalytic publishing.
In addition to these new areas of scholarship, we are exploring new ways of writing about the topics and questions that pulse through the clinical encounter. We are moving into the second installment of a new section led by Lynne Zeavin, “In the Session.” This section presents brief clinical moments that startle or disrupt us, and which require the analyst to say or do something out of the ordinary. We are also introducing a “Creative Essay” section, led by Kerry Malawista. This section reflects the growing number of creative submissions to JAPA. We believe there is significant interest among our readers in using creative nonfiction to address psychoanalytic questions. We intend to set a high bar for this type of writing by soliciting pieces from established literary authors who write with deep psychological understanding, and who can give us a new way into thinking about themes central to literature and psychoanalysis. We have gathered a panel of creative writers to review these essays. Both sections are by solicitation only.
We are supported, meanwhile, by a core of associate editors who will continue on from Mitch’s term. These editors—Phil Blumberg, Anne Erreich, Steve Portuges, and Lynne Zeavin—are the primary people whose experience I draw upon to ensure a basic continuity in our identity as a journal and to make sure that we uphold our highest standards as we embark on new areas of scholarship.
In broadening our review capacity, in opening ourselves to new forms of expertise, to adjacent research traditions, to other ways of knowing and in some cases to other ways of writing, we are, in a basic sense, carrying forward what I’ve learned from my time at the journal so far—to tolerate discomfort, to be rigorous, always, but to court the mysteries that enrich our work, not to know too much, and to foster a scholarly community where we can learn from our differences.
