Editorial

Existential Analysis is celebrating 25 years of publication. Our silver anniversary edition opens with a brief commentary by Emmy van Deurzen, followed by Becoming an Existential Therapist, the transcript of her contribution to the BBC radio 3 series 'Existential Me'.

The issue continues with the second part of Ernesto Spinelli's paper on Being Sexual, and it is followed by Victor Rodrigues' response to Spinelli's part one, Are Sexual Preferences Existential Choices? (part one appeared in the July 2013 edition of this journal). We would like to invite further contributions to this discussion on existential understandings of sexuality and will endeavour to publish them in the 26th edition (25.2 will include a number of papers from the recent Society of Existential Analysis conference, which focused on the themes of Love and Hate).

We also feature a number of papers on questions of 'mental illness' and issues related to psychopathology. The first of these, by Diego Vitali, describes an attempt to work phenomenologically in a psychiatric institution. Next we offer Richard's critique of Szasz's seminal text The Myth of Mental Illness. We are honoured to be able to publish Aaron Esterson's paper The Affirmation of Experience, written in 1985 but never presented or published until now, and acknowledge our indebtedness to Anthony Stadlen for preparing this paper and for his brief commentary, Quintessential Phenomenology, which explains the circumstances surrounding the paper's fate. The issue concludes with the theme of psychopathology taken up again by Ekaterina Denyskova in Madness as an Escape, and Shield's Psychosis as a Mechanism for Coping with Existential Distress.

We are also pleased to publish three diverse papers, Creative Inspiration and Existential Coaching by Sasha van Deurzen-Smith, George Berguno's A Phenomenological Analysis of Existential Conscience in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day, and Kirkegaardian Selves by Tamar Aylat-Yaguri, all thought-provoking contributions to stimulate and inspire. Responses are always encouraged.

As usual we include a number of enlightening book reviews; our thanks to Martin Adams who can be contacted if you are interested in reviewing any titles on the current book list.

Simon du Plock
Greg Madison