Notes to Contributors

The Journal is a professional journal for psychotherapists and counsellors published by The Bowlby Centre. We welcome contributions from colleagues of all clinical orientations that further attachment-based relational psychotherapy and counselling. The Journal is a professional journal, not an academic journal, and as such, we encourage colleagues to submit accounts of clinical work, poems, personal experiences, reviews of books, films, and exhibits, consistent with our values, that they feel can make a contribution to the ongoing development of an attachment and relational approach to clinical work.

Our values for clinical work are:

  • We believe that mental distress has its origin in failed or inadequate attachment relationships in early life and is best treated in the context of a long-term human relationship.
  • Attachment relationships are shaped in a social world that includes poverty, discrimination and social inequality. The effects of the social world are a necessary part of the therapy.
  • Psychotherapy should be available to all, and from the attachment perspective, especially those discriminated against or described as ‘unsuitable’ for therapy.
  • Psychotherapy needs to be provided with respect, warmth, openness, appropriate boundaries, a readiness to interact and relate, and free from discrimination of any kind.
  • Those who have been silenced about their experiences and survival strategies need to have their reality acknowledged and not pathologised.

Colleagues considering a submission to the Journal may find it useful to contact Kate White with a sketch of their idea. You can email from here. We will work with all interested authors and in no case will we reject a submission without consultation with the author. We are mindful of the sensitivity of clinical work and the feelings of colleagues that writing about their work risks objectifying the therapeutic relationship. We take the view, however, that exchanges between colleagues about clinical work are essential to the development of our field and is in the best interests of our clients. You are are encouraged to contact us to discuss these or any concerns you may have about writing.

Instructions to contributors

Please submit your manuscript electronically to the Editor. You can email from here. For clinical reports please include the name and e-mail address of one colleague who can serve as one of three referees. We attempt to give writers first feedback within one month of submission. In the interests of clarity and style we reserve the right to sub-edit manuscripts but all changes will be cleared with authors before publication to ensure that meanings have not been changed. We encourage the use of inclusive language and non-medical descriptions of mental pain.