Editing as a psychological practice

The experience of the Jungian analyst in the role of editor of manuscripts by creative colleagues is examined. Historical precedents include Michael Fordham's editorial correspondence with Jung around the latter's synchronicity essay; Jung's handling of manuscripts submitted by Sabina Spielrein to the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen and various authors to the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie und ihre Grenzgebiete, and the author's close editing of a paper submitted by Andrew Samuels to the Journal of Analytical Psychology. In addition to mustering an adequate amount of generosity, erudition, and availability, the analytic editor must know how to clarify a psychological argument and to gauge the psychological impact of the written text. Notwithstanding transference/countertransference phenomena that can emerge around issues of competition, envy, and territoriality when author and editor are also fellow-authors working in the same field, the editor needs to be comfortable about serving as the author's selfobject and midwife. From an analytic perspective, although communicating decisions about the best way to put ideas into words can sometimes attract transference to the editor, the more profound transference that analysts experience in the editing situation is toward the text being edited, which helps to motivate donated time spent caring for journal manuscripts.