A decade ago, Jay Greenberg introduced himself as the new Editor of The Quarterly by pointing out the central role of conversation in psychoanalysis. The clinical psychoanalytic process is based upon a conversation between analyst and analysand; the psychoanalytic profession is increasingly marked by the conversations among the several schools and communities of psychoanalysts, and journals are essential to those processes. In the intervening years, he has demonstrated a remarkable talent for developing and maintaining The Quarterly’s role in fostering those conversations.
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly was born in 1932. For its first eight years, it had multiple editors, but since 1941 it has one at a time. Jay has been our ninth. He is the first non-M.D. in that role except for Geza Roheim, who was one of the committee of sixteen who led The Quarterly from 1939 to 1940. Jay followed a distinguished line. The five most recent— Henry Smith, Owen Renik, Sander Abend, Dale Boesky, and Jack Arlow—led The Quarterly for some forty years and maintained its high standards while broadening its scope to embrace multiple psychoanalytic communities. Jay’s long interest in comparative psychoanalysis was a natural fit for the next step in The Quarterly’s development.
During Jay’s tenure, The Quarterly has published forty issues with a total of 10,176 pages, which included 290 original articles and 257 book reviews. To provide a more detailed view of the editor’s experience I have focused on the last three and a half years. From January 2017 through July 2020, the journal published fifteen issues, comprising 3,485 pages. This included 107 articles and 88 book or film reviews, for a total of 195 items, or 13 items per issue. The articles were selected from 197 submissions which had received 554 reviews. That means a total of 946 manuscripts (submissions, reviews, accepted articles, and book reviews) crossed the Editor’s desk, or about 5 per week. 48% of the submissions and 28% of the published articles were from outside of the United States.
These are important data, but they speak to quantity, not to quality; not to the ideas, the creativity, the imagination that is embodied in the journal’s pages. Jay has done an immense amount of work and has earned our gratitude, but more important, he has provided us with rich and exciting experiences as he has guided us through the world of psychoanalytic discourse.
We will not simply say farewell to Jay, as we will welcome him to The Quarterly’s Board of Directors. As you know, he will be followed as Editor by Lucy LaFarge. Lucy is our first woman editor, except for Helene Deutsch and Flanders Dunbar, who were two of the committee of sixteen from 1939 to 1940. I have a special personal pleasure in rejoining this team of three—Jay, Lucy, and myself. I have known each of them for decades and we worked together on the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis until Jay became Editor of The Quarterly and Lucy the North American Editor of The International Journal. We did a good job—The International Journal prospered—and we had fun. I am confident that we will repeat, or surpass, our prior success.