EDITORIAL

The Editorial Board would like to thank all those who gave feedback on our new look journal. It seems that members are very happy with this development and consider it to be in keeping with our ethos and professional presentation. Your feedback is very important to us, on this and on all things related to our journal, be that positive, negative and/or controversial.

So, we now bring you the second issue of our new look. It carries some very interesting questions, and calls to the reader to reflect on and consider a number of different topics. The first of our two conversations gives us an American perspective on how Irish humanistic psychotherapists are experienced. It also touches into the controversial matter of the 8th amendment with a focus on Irish women being able to fully protect their health and wellbeing. The second conversation from Pauline Dolan introduces us to Martin Pollecoff, and explores a number of issues, asking “…do we have the courage, confidence, and ability to lead the way?”

Iseult White, who spoke so eloquently and passionately at the IAHIP AGM about difficulties around our complaints procedures, has now written on the same topic. With an energetic and encouraging request to ‘give up your auld projections’, Iseult takes us behind the scenes and through some research on how we may need to further reform our (IAHIP) complaints procedures. It is perhaps true that people who speak with courage, from vulnerable experience, bring something to all of us. Further into the journal and also speaking from a source of personal experience, Aoife Ruth walks us along the borderlines of membership, pointing to a number of areas that ask for our careful consideration.

Also at the IAHIP AGM, there was a moving tribute made to Mary Paula Walsh who was then very ill, but who has since, sadly, passed away. Mary Paula submitted a number of articles to Inside Out over the years and, in tribute, we have reprinted one of her articles in this issue. It is very poignantly titled ‘Some thoughts on the art of living – and dying – by a psychotherapist’. In addition, there is an obituary by Anne O’Connor. On the same theme of life and death, we have a poem from Fiona Smith, and Mary Hamill leads us into a “third space” of grieving, that of the online world. Mary draws us towards exploring, rather than judging, the meaning and place for this medium in our experience of loss and our desire for continued connection.

In addition this issue carries a reflection on therapeutic practice from Noelle Okonji, The Space… and some book reviews, which we hope you will enjoy, as they all give place and presence for thought and reflection. Finally, following on from our mention in the Spring issue, we would also like to draw your attention to the advertisement from IAHIP for the now completed programme of the Autumn/Winter Workshop series 2017/18.