Editorial

2001 is considered by many to be the opening of a new millennium. So one's mind turns to the beginning of things. A hundred years ago Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, his most important book, which was the start of the enormous interest in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the twentieth century. But phenomenologists should remember that it is also a hundred years since Husserl's Logical Investigations was published; it appeared in an English translation by J.N. Findley in 1970. This book is the foundation of modern phenomenology and was thought by Heidegger to be Husserl's most important work. Briefly it's basis is a critique of 'psychologism' which is the belief that logic laws are ultimately based on natural law. If this were so then rational thought would be entirely explicable in the terms of the natural sciences. This belief is implicit in most twentieth century psychotherapy and is never questioned. Will the twenty-first century bring a proper understanding of Husserl's insights which would result in a complete reappraisal of psychotherapy? Husserl was always a 'beginner' in phenomenology and appropriately a number of the papers in this issue of the Journal are concerned with the beginnings of psychotherapy in various different ways.

Among others we might mention three. Cooper argues for the incorporation of genetic influences in an understanding of human being-in-the-world. Pietet takes us back to the first questions which shaped the beginning of thought. Adams, in his paper reflecting on the practice of phenomenology, presents an argument for the return to the fundamental method which underpins our existential practice.

Simon du Plock

John Heaton