Letter from the Editor
Letter from the Editor
Kevin Boileau
Fall, 2015
I am writing this year’s letter in the early Autumn of 2015. A subtle wind has emerged in the morning, and coldness at night that reminds of falling leaves and eventual frost. I go through this experience every year, and more particularly in my experience working at the EPIS Journal as Executive Editor. Through the years we have built a diligent, committed team of professionals who see to it that we have our annual, academic conference—as scheduled—and that we produce the companion journal. Each conference is different and this produces a different journal issue. Yet, they are all tied together with our common commitment for innovative reflection that leads to contributions to both the academic and clinical worlds.
There are many psychoanalytic institutes; many phenomenologists; many psychoanalysts and therapists; and many critical theorists and philosophers. Several focused and hardworking individuals from all over the world engage in these daily disciplines and discourses in order to serve their clients, other academics, and humanity at large in the hopes of making modest gestures toward an improved world. We at the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute & Society are part of these efforts and intend to deepen our commitment to this work in the future. Fortunately, we have had the privilege to receive into our community a number of these sorts of individuals: caring, committed, intelligent, creative, and responsible to the solidarity of our group. I am personally humbled and grateful to have met so many unique, responsible, and first-rate thinkers who have chosen to become EPIS members and students.
We have come a long way over the many years that EPIS has been in existence. Our quarterly seminars always sit at the core of who we are because it is in this forum that we confront great ideas and texts of former scholars and thinkers, most of them who are now deceased but not forgotten. Our weekly radio show is now almost three years old, and it has become a valuable forum for the exploration of new ideas presented audibly and verbally. However, we are also considering the memorializing of some of these radio shows in order to increase the world’s exposure to our ideas. Our educational programs are growing in scope and intention. As such, it is our intent to become a valuable, contributing educational program for clinicians, academics, and other intellectuals who want to deepen their knowledge and understanding of these fields in a focused and intense way.
This leads us to the EPIS Journal, which is entitled Presencing EPIS. Our current commitment is to produce one issue annually, which could change from time to time as we see fit. We are considering the publication of companion publications that speak to different communities, for example, a journal that explores radical critical theory; a journal of applied phenomenology for practitioners in a number of fields; and journal for innovative conflict resolution methodology that finds our fields valuable and useful. Nevertheless, these all supplement our original journal, this journal here for which I am writing this Letter in the autumn of 2015.
I do not know the future. I do not know the future of EPIS, its programs, or this journal. I do know that EPIS and EPIS Press are on a golden path, so I anticipate that we will continue to compile year after year of interesting and valuable essays for our journals and related publications. I also know that as long as I can hold a pen I will write this Letter, as a continuing contribution to this journal. In time, as in all matters, some of us older contributors will teach and train the younger to take over, and to make it theirs whatever that shall be, but always with human goodness and the pursuit of knowledge and understanding at its core.
It is with this appreciation and gratitude, and much hope for the future of EPIS and this journal that I write this Letter. I thank everyone who has contributed to it, and I encourage future contributions and growth in our mutual responsibility.
Dr. Kevin Boileau, PhD, JD/LLM
Executive Editor, Presencing EPIS
A Journal of the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute & Society
Fall, 2015 issue
