Editorial

EDITORIAL

The editors are pleased to be able to include a number of papers in this, the second edition of the sixteenth volume of Existential Analysis, which make significant contributions to the theoretical literature which informs therapeutic practice. A number of the papers in this edition make interesting links between what occurs in the therapy session and ways of relating in the wider world. Among these, Greg Madison's Habermas, Psychoanalysis, and Emancipation, in the process of a consideration of the Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, addresses power imbalances in the analytic situation, and ways in which analysis may inadvertently function to adjust individuals to society. Darren Langdridge introduces Paul Ricoeur's work on ideology and utopia, and suggests this might provide a narrative framework for understanding interpersonal conflict and reconciliation. Will W. Adams writes about the "growing generative collaboration between ecopsychology and phenomenology", and draws important connections between the ecopsychological critique of technological domination of the natural world and the philosophies of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.

This edition also includes two papers – by Alun Jones and Graham Prince – which take R.D. Laing's life and work as their focus, and a thought-provoking contribution, Existentialism, Transparency and Anthropology, from Colin Feltham which presents, as he expresses it, the views of "a sympathetic but critical outsider to existential therapy."

We hope these papers, and others in Volume Sixteen, provide a stimulating addition to the exchange of ideas among those interested in the analysis of existence from philosophical and psychological perspectives.

Simon du Plock

John Heaton