With the celebration of the last Ordinary General Assembly of the AIPCF on February 2nd, one fiscal year has closed, and another has begun. Today, I have the responsibility of leading the AIPCF Journal as its editor-in-chief. I will present my main ideas and introduce the team working to make this journal an instrument of scientific knowledge.

A brief review of history: The journal was born one year after the founding of the AIPPF, in 2007. It was founded by Anna María Nicoló, who guided the initial organization, which was continued in a later stage by Ezequiel Jaroslavsky and David Benhaïm until Daniela Lucarelli took over in the third stage of successions. Thus – up to the present moment – the Journal has had three directors who gave their best to this noble task.

Given the challenge of following in their footsteps, my first gesture is to thank them for the direction and effort of which I have been a witness, having been part of the journal’s Editorial Board since its founding. They remain linked to the journal’s history, and many continue in editorial roles.

The objective is to continue deepening and advancing in the selection of articles written by colleagues who work from the duly founded theoretical basis of psychoanalysis and its application to the clinical field of the family and the couple.

Psychoanalysis, since its creation by Sigmund Freud and his followers, has deepened its knowledge, observations, and theoretical contributions by analyzing clinical situations. Other contributions have added variants to the classic conceptual model, arising in relation to the new complexities presented by historical-social changes, with modifications in culture according to times and places. Psychoanalysis has expanded its approach to treatment and its field of application due to needs and to types of suffering that must be addressed both through listening and through understanding. The recipient has evolved from being a single subject to being a group, and within the forms of groups, to other variants such as: the couple and the family.

For some time now, we have been seeing couples in situations of misunderstanding, reciprocal obstruction, destructive rivalry, with the exposure of painful feelings, carrying histories that arise and are acted out through them. The same happens with many families who come due to the difficulty of living together, due to wanderings in their respective responsibilities, due to significant failures in functions, due to the helplessness of children, hostility, and other situations such as organic illness that do not reverse solely with the administration of medical treatments.

This is our field of work. It is a complex, difficult field that requires attending to and understanding dynamics that have a history, defensive processes, inter-play of parental models, generational processes (trans and intergenerational), which must be understood in their diverse meanings and scopes.

Our work as a Journal of Family and Couple Psychoanalysis is to give expression and dissemination to the reading of relevant writings from diverse theoretical frameworks, illustrated by clinical case studies, which includes the dissemination of useful techniques for working in these specific fields of application. The aim is to review indicators for clinically evaluating the situations that arise and that relate to the framework, the constitution of therapeutic teams, interventions, interpretations, and follow-up in the healing process, which we see more as a capacity to transform.

We work in the journal through the written word, but we intend to go further, meaning that the texts build a useful toolbox for colleagues in their eagerness to learn. This is why we work as a team from the editorial committee, the editorial board, the reading committee, and under the advice of the Scientific Council, so that each issue of the journal that comes out serves as a training instrument for colleagues, as an exchange of ideas, and as a discussion with foundations. For this, the works submitted by authors are selected and distributed according to the sections of the journal, which deals with a previously selected topic of current interest. The thematic articles are accompanied by other sections such as Reading Notes with comments on relevant films and books; interesting works that are outside the issue’s theme, and a dictionary to reinforce terminology concepts. Our journal is international, which means that we receive works from authors of various nationalities and maintain three official languages: English, French, and Spanish. Each work is written in one of these languages but includes a summary and keywords in the other two languages.

In this new management that I have started, we have organized three coordinations, each corresponding to a language. The coordination for the Spanish language is led by Elizabeth Palacios, the coordination for the French language is led by Christiane Joubert, and the coordination for the English language is led by Ludovica Grassi. All members of the Editorial Board are integrated into one or more of these, depending on their proficiency in each language. The names of all the staff who make up the Journal in its various departments are listed below. New members have joined the Scientific Council, the Editorial Board, and the Reading Committee. We welcome them all.

The association has the quarterly bulletin “Tramas” which transmits news, events, activities of members, other associations, and other specialized journals. We are in permanent contact with this Bulletin.

To conclude this presentation, I would add that a special interest shared by the entire team is for the journal to have greater visibility and reach a larger number of readers through the website, not only of the association (IACFP) but also independently of it. For this, we are working with the webmaster: Carlos Marchese and his team, to achieve it. We are open to comments, suggestions, and anything that allows for constructive dialogue with readers. (revue@aipcf.net)

Thank you very much,

Irma Morosini