Robert M. Young Online Writings
'VARIETIES OF HINSHELWOOD EXPERIENCE'
by Robert M Young
This paper was given at a conference on 14 November 2009 to celebrate the work of R. D. Hinshelwood on the occasion of his retirement as Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex. I decided to give an affectionate, personal and anecdotal account of the history of our working relations in various spheres and projects and to include an overview of his writings, a number of which I had published. I was surprised that none of the other speakers made much reference to their working relations with him. I was even more surprised that Ann Scott, the editor of The British Journal of Psychotherapy, to whom the papers were entrusted for publication, made it a condition of including this paper in the special issue of the journal containing the conference papers, that I should bowdlerize my paper in various ways. I thought her requirements were variously humourless, craven or picayune. Moreover, I doubt very much that any of the people who gave talks at the conference thought for one moment that accepting her offer to publish them in the British Journal of Psychotherapy meant that she would treat them in any way as submissions, subject to her editing. Bob Hinshelwood agreed with me that her strictures were excessive. He tried to bring about a compromise, whereupon she required even more alterations, some of which I found truly bizarre. He and I withdrew from the negotiations and decided that I would put the talk on my web site, and he would draw attention to it and its URL in the afterword he contributed to the special issue.