100 years of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis

Unperturbed by a letter from a London publisher (1924), saying that the latest news from America suggested that “psycho-analysis was in decline already, the subject having suddenly gone ‘flop’”, Dr. Jones set the course by which the International Journal and the Library became highly respected means of communication and worthy archives of psycho-analytic development. (Payne 1958, 308)

Although the idea of an English language journal had first been mentioned in 1913, it was not until after World War I that the idea came to fruition. Jones tells Freud that the time is ripe for an English language journal in the same letter in which he mentions his grief for the recent death of his young wife. Coming not long after the devastation of the First World War, the new journal becomes a sign of survival and of life over death, of creativity and action in the wake of mourning.

You see I can look forward in life, although I have been through hell itself these last three months. It has been an indescribably terrible experience, signifying more even than a tremendous loss—owing to my inner psychical situation and the poignant circumstances of my wife’s death. But I am surely winning through, and have learnt very much by it. (Jones 1918, 326)

Freud replies on 22 December 2018: “Needless to say we are all impatient to get your contributions to the Zeitschrift and see you taking an active part in the new career, opening for ‘her’.”

Different agendas, personal rivalries and financial issues were at stake. Freud writes to Jones in January 1919:

As for the journal, I hope you know, that both periodicals, Zeitschrift and Imago, have become official with the “European” groups. I hope also you have heard by Sachs, that we are setting on foot a ψα Verlag. Now Rank developed the idea at the same time as you, that you should bring out an English edition of the Zeitschrift (or both), all the papers getting translated into the two languages.

Meanwhile Abraham wanted to resuscitate the Jahrbuch, which had been the first of a number of psychoanalytic journals started at the turn of the century, this one under the direction of Jung, and which had folded due to rivalries and disputes, and economic problems. But Freud warns:

 …  a third publication would be restricted to the purely Ψα public, which does not have much buying power. [ … ] I am afraid that the material produced by us in the course of a year might not be sufficient to keep it going. We do not exactly have an abundance of material even for the Zeitschrift [ … ] what England (and America) produce is henceforward to be diverted to the English Journal of Ψα. (Freud 1919a, 401)

At the meeting held at the newly formed British Psycho-Analytical Society on 20 February 1919, “it was resolved that the subscription [to the Society] should be two guineas per annum, which should include the Journal and the Subscription to the International Psycho-Analytic Association” (Reports of the International Psycho-Analytic Association 1920, 116).

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis was finally published by the International Psychoanalytical Press (International Psychoanalytischer Verlag) in Vienna with Jones as editor and Otto Rank taking charge of things in Vienna. After many delays the first issue was finally published. Jones writes: “Dear Otto, the Journal arrived today and I was very proud to see it. The get-up is altogether excellent and you are greatly to be congratulated. [ … ].” However, he then adds: “There are only two slight faults in the whole number, that the printing on the front cover is not in the middle and that Fleugel's initials have got altered … ” (Jones 1920, 30 July).

One senses his increasing frustration in the next few months:

Dear Otto, I am afraid that I cannot agree to the journal being issued without my having seen its contents, especially when there are as many and such serious errors as in the pages you sent, so I wired to you yesterday to stop the issue at all cost until I could send you the corrected proofs which I now enclose. (30 November 1920)

A few days later he writes:

Dear Otto, you did the right thing to let the decision about Journal No. 2 rest with Prof. For my part I would suffer any cost and any delay rather than see the Journal appear with such impossible errors. I cannot describe to you how incredibly foreign such mistakes are as to write New-York instead of New York, and i instead of I; the latter is like writing sachs (his name occurs to me because he always makes this mistake in English). Such things affect me deeply both for the sake of the Journal and because of my responsibility as editor; the world would not guess that Stern corrected the Journal in place of me, so that I would simply look ridiculous. (3 December 1920).

In the first editorial, Jones sets out the aims of the Journal:

The main consideration, though not the only one, that has made this increasingly imperative is the unexpectedly great progress in recent years of the interest taken in our Science by readers not familiar with the German language, and the desirability of making accessible to them the latest researches in the subject. It has long been evident that a periodical published mainly in German could not indefinitely subserve the function of an official international organ, and, since interest in Psycho-Analysis has extended from German-speaking countries to English-speaking countries far more than to any other, it was only a question of time when such a Journal as the present one would have to be founded: with the cessation of the war, the resumption of scientific activities, and the reestablishment of contact between different countries, that time may be judged to have now arrived. (Jones 1920, 3)

Anna Freud notes on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the International Journal that “behind the scenes, the reasons for establishing an English Journal were essentially practical and humble ones”:

The International Journal came into being at a period when the publishing house established by Freud in Vienna (Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag) had suffered severe financial reverses due to the First World War and its aftermath. There was urgent need for rescue operations. (Freud 1969, 473).

She suggests that it was consequent to the Nazi advances and the subsequent Second World War that “the balance between the German and English language became and remained reversed so far as psychoanalysis is concerned” (Ibid.)

In 1922, when the Verlag was no longer able to subsidise the cost of publishing, printing moved to London, still under the International Psycho-Analytical Press. In 1924, after a short period with Lawn House in Hampstead Square, the publishing moved to Baillière, Tindall and Co. who were already the publisher of Jones's Papers on Psycho-Analysis. Baillière, Tindall and Co. remained the publisher of the Journal until 1989 when publishing was moved to Routledge, then, after a period of self-publishing, it moved to Wiley Blackwell & Sons and last year again back to Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis group.

Ernest Jones remained the editor until Freud's death in 1939. Glover writes about him:

Only those who have had the opportunity of watching Jones at work, as for a number of active years I had the privilege of doing, can appreciate fully the strain of constantly exercising judgement, balancing opposing interests and producing what is in effect a new book every quarter … Jones enjoyed the immeasurable advantage of being able to do everything better than everybody else … The skill with which he maintained the international status of the Journal and secured its financial stability … had to be witnessed to be believed. (Glover 1969, 499)

David Tuckett, in the footsteps of Jones (1920), James Strachey (1940), Adrian Stephen (1946), the triumvirate of Willi Hoffer, John Rickman and Clifford Scott (1947), Hoffer (1949), John D. Sutherland (1960); Joseph Sandler (1969) and Thomas Hayley (1978), writes about Jones 75 years later:

It is to Jones that the Journal owes two of its most important and scientific traditions: its non-partisan approach to controversy and its encouragement of the view that judgements concerning the truth and utility of ideas should be based as far as possible on evidential data. (Tuckett 1994, 1)

Clearly, however, Jones was not an easy character, though as Riccardo Steiner noted (1993, xxxi–xxxii), his “enormous, obsessive, and often authoritarian labor of control over and motivation of every part of the newborn British Psychoanalytical Society from 1919 onward” is what also made it possible for him to establish the Journal. And Winnicott wrote that:

… those who came in contact with Ernest Jones were often stung by something in his way of making contact. It is not easy to know exactly what it was that people experienced, but whatever it was it had to be accepted. His mother told him he had a sharp tongue. His own Celtic quickness was not always to be matched by a similar quickness in the other person, and this could easily lead to a moment of awkwardness in which there was a sense of something having gone wrong, when in fact all was well. Jones had a keen grip on every subject that he interested himself in, and it would seem that he expected a similar preparedness on the part of those to whom he was talking; when the others were, in fact, not at grips with their subject in a way comparable to his own they were apt to feel a sense of intellectual inferiority, often only too well founded in fact. (1958, 303)

The Journal was published four times a year until 1955 except for the war years when issues had to be combined. Since that time publication increased to six a year. Willi Hoffer notes in his editorial that there would be no raise in the subscription rate due to the increase in issues. He further writes that:

The Editorial Committee is convinced that the increase of administrative work and responsibility will be outweighed by the more frequent and closer contact with the readers and that by such relationship the quality of our publication can be affected favourably. (1955, 440)

Broadly speaking, the aims and editorial policy of the Journal set out by Jones in his first editorial have continued to apply through the century:

the contents of the Journal will be on the following lines. They will be confined to the subject of Psycho-Analysis and kindred studies having a bearing on Psycho-Analysis. They will thus not attempt to cover the whole field of psychopathology [ … ], the contents will go beyond the clinical sphere and will embrace as well pure Psycho-Analysis and the other branches of applied Psycho-Analysis, e.g. its relation and application to literature, education, mythology, philology, sociology, anthropology, and so on. [ … ] (Jones 1920, 5)

The Journal had been started as the official journal of the IPA. For the 50th anniversary, Joseph Sandler stressed the special place and role of the International Journal:

The Journal was started with the intention of representing international psychoanalysis, and it has maintained its identity and function over the past 50 years. This is perhaps all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the administration of the Journal has fallen to the lot of the British Society. That this Society has been able to maintain the Journal through many difficult periods, and at the same time to preserve the Journal’s independent identity, reflects the tradition of tolerance which has kept the British Society together even though it has contained so many divergent trends. The Journal has never become a partisan vehicle for any one trend in psychoanalysis, even during the years when one point of view appeared to be quite dominant in the British Society.

Although a number of psychoanalytic journals have been started in recent years, the need for an international journal is no less acute than in the past. Indeed, it seems to be all the more necessary nowadays to have an organ which is at one and the same time the guardian of a long tradition and a liberal forum for the different viewpoints within psychoanalysis. (Sandler 1969, 417)

For the 75th anniversary, David Tuckett re-affirms the special international role of the International Journal:

Freud founded the Journal to provide a coherent on-going setting in which all those who were taking part in the growing body of psychoanalytic thought and research could enter into dialogue with one another. From the start it was clear that this dialogue should be international and, although the administration of the Journal quite soon became the responsibility of the British Society, an increasingly wide group of colleagues has come to make up the editorial group. They have seen fit to aim the Journal at being both the guardian of the psychoanalytic tradition and a liberal forum for the different points of view within psychoanalysis. As such, the Journal has successfully represented international psychoanalysis and in doing so has established a unique identity among the publications in our field. The Journal has enjoyed the goodwill and co-operation of many colleagues, who advise, write and read it. (1994, 1)

This is eminently applicable today. In an editorial a few years ago, I wrote:

Being “international” in my view means publishing the best papers from all traditions. Psychoanalysis has developed in different places along different traditions. Strong traditions are to be valued and fostered. Enabling the creative and focused pursuit of specific ways of thinking and of particular topics of interest is important for our discipline. Difference is to be respected and can also nurture cross-fertilisation. Looking at divergences and convergences is important and the International Journal is also the place of publication for those who seriously wish to engage with other points of view. (Birksted-Breen 2012, 3)

I have also emphasised a core concern of the International Journal being

the creative space between tradition and change, where development stems from psychoanalytic foundations in a dialectical movement of returning to the past and looking forward … [we need] to stay attentive to the questions—what is the psychoanalytical? Where are its parameters? When does it become so changed that it is no longer psychoanalysis? These are not simple questions and need constant discussion if our profession is to retain its solid foundation, providing a frame for creativity. Innovation emerges from previously established parameters and resides in specific, sometimes subtle, shifts in thought. (Birksted-Breen 2013, 425)

More than ever, we aim to develop the reach of psychoanalysis and of the International Journal, which holds the history of psychoanalysis and its theoretical developments, as well as to present current important developments in the field. The four boards of reviewers have been integrated into one large board to encourage cross-cultural perspectives and debates. An active interdisciplinary section and a film essay section have reached out to new audiences. The education section presents significant concepts understood from different cultural perspectives.

As well as being international, the Journal has always followed Freud in attaching importance to the conjunction of theory with clinical observation. Adrian Stephen, brother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, who followed Strachey as editor (both of them members of the Bloomsbury group), writes in 1945: “True clinical observations are necessary for the formation of true theory and true theory is of almost equal importance for the making of clinical observations” (Stephen 1945, 55).

Volume 100 of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis also marks the 80th anniversary of Freud's death. The Journal was started under the direction of Freud to provide a setting in which all those who take part in the growing body of psychoanalytic thought can enter into dialogue with each other. It has been the journal of record and has been instrumental in diffusing the main theories and publishing the most important authors and their ideas.

To gain a temporal perspective, it is interesting to remember that the Journal was established at a time of maturity of Freud's work. It was in the year of publication of his turning point paper Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), soon followed by The Ego and the Id (1923), taking psychoanalysis in new directions, particularly in the anglophone world, often trumping the earlier models.

Psychoanalysis has been and will always be by its nature countercultural, not least now in its aim to preserve values such as time for reflection in a fast-moving and conflicted world.

It might also be noted that the present editor is the first woman in the role, another sign of changing times. Interestingly, women have played a huge role as psychoanalysts, theorists and authors since Freud. But none have played a role as overall editor, nor have they been well recognised for their contribution to the Journal. In the exhibition that will take place in London at the Freud Museum at the time of the London celebration centenary conference, we have chosen to show, among other things, the important contribution made by two women in particular to the publication of the Journal in its early years.

For the centenary celebration conference (The Psychoanalytic Core: Encountering and Speaking to the Unconscious) and the exhibition at the Freud Museum (The Enigma of the Hour, 100 Years of Psychoanalytic Thought), we have chosen themes central to psychoanalysis and also to the development of the International Journal: translation in the widest sense of the word, the unconscious and temporality.

We look forward to welcoming you to celebrate with us.