The writing of clinical papers: the analyst as illusionist

Rather than begin by defining what we mean when we call a paper 'clinical', I would like to reflect on how such a piece of work originates, how, through the interplay between the written and the spoken word, it becomes clinical and good enough for a professional journal. In the following, I shall pay particular attention to recent publications from the editorial side, that is, those by Wharton, one of the three editors of The Journal of Analytical Psychology, and by Tuckett, editor of The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. I shall plead that there should not only be one kind of clinical paper, namely the type that for political reasons seems to be the one that is most wanted at the present time and the aim of which is to put psychoanalysis on more secure foundations than it currently is.