We ran into a few difficulties in translating the name of our psychoanalytical journal. Should it be "The weather cock" ? That seemed a good idea ! But it could also simply be "The Heron Cock". The first translation reminds us of "The Weathermen", in their 68 version but also in their original version, as fighters for independence. The second translation brings us closer to the everyday considerations of clinical psychoanalytical practice.

In either case, Le Coq-Héron is a psychoanalytical journal which appears every two or three months, publishing four to six issues each year. We are the French psychoanalytical journal with the longest tradition, excepting of course the Revue française de psychanalyse. But in contrast to the latter, we have a multiple orientation. Protagoras' philosophy was based on the assumption that we are human and every human concern does concern us. We are concerned with psychoanalysis, but also with psychiatry, medicine, pedagogy, sociology, literature, etc. Our journal was created in 1969 by a small group of Parisian mental health workers. Should we say "Once upon a time"?

Once upon a time, Le Coq-Héron had a board composed of a psychologist, three psycho-pedagogues, a social worker and a psychoanalyst, all of them working together in the same child mental health public clinic, le Centre Etienne-Marcel, located in the heart of Paris. Circumstances offered them a certain amount of money. They decided to invest this money in the creation of a journal which would be strictly internal to the clinic, but it was very quickly distributed to the general public as well.

Le Coq-Héron is the name of a street in Paris, close to the Centre Etienne-Marcel. We all used to meet there. The six who created the journal were equally impressed by this name, Le Coq-Héron, and we still are today. Are we weathermen, simple everyday labourers or both ? We most probably are both !

Each year, if not each month and day by day, the editorial staff became larger, new psychoanalysts have joined us. In the beginning, they came from our mental health clinic, the Centre Etienne-Marcel, but they now come from everywhere, though we still maintain special and reciprocal links with this Center.

Several particularities make Le Coq-Héron an outstanding journal : psychoanalysts who participate in the editorial staff may come from every psychoanalytical school or group in France or elsewhere. It has been thirty years since we started working this way, with mutual comprehension and care, without loosing our personal convictions and differences. This collaboration between people coming from so many horizons is probably due to a specific point in Le Coq-Héron rules, another particularity of our journal : a majority vote is not required for acceptance of a paper, but it is required for its rejection. Even if only one of us believes there is something important in a paper, something original which may stimulate thinking, the paper will be published. In this case, those of us who disagree with the paper are free to comment on it or criticise it, thus starting an open discussion. This measure was introduced to allow for representation of different positions in our reviewers committee, thus making sure that any voice which might trouble some of us does not remain mute. For these reasons, Le Coq-Héron does not have - and does not wish to have - another orientation than the one specified. We want to keep an open tribune, where controversial opinions may be expressed, confronted, if possible debated, even if sometimes we may look slightly fantastic and whimsical.

Because our reviewers committee includes people of different nationalities, we are also specialised in the translations of papers mostly from German, English, Hungarian, and occasionally Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. We have thus published two of Freud's original papers, some of Ferenczi's papers before their later publication in his Complete Works, and the papers of several authors, such as Balint, Melanie Klein, Masud Khan, Loránd, Sterba, Fodor, Greenson, Grubich-Simitis, Nemes, Binét, Vikár, Hermann and so on. We have also published original papers of French well or lesser known authors, such as Lacan, Dolto, Mannoni, This, Sabourin, Gantheret, Ribettes, Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt, Pierre Benoit, Lavalle, Audouard, Dejours, Didier-Weill, and so forth.

Le Coq-Héron sometimes also publishes fiction, when it seems to have a special link with psychoanalysis. We have published Didiers-Weill's theatre play Les trois cases blanches, and Le Coq-Héron's translation group translated parts of Carl Spitteler's Imago, a novel which had made Freud enthusiastic and gave its title to one of the first psychoanalytical journals. Navarin later published the novel in its entirety.

Le Coq-Héron's translation group emanates from our editorial staff. It has been enlarged by psychoanalysts coming from elsewhere. Together, we have translated Ferenczi's 4th volume of Complete Works and his Clinical Journal, as well as The Ferenczi-Groddeck Correspondence for Editions Payot. We are presently translating the last volume of the huge Freud-Ferenczi Correspondence.

We have lately developed a partnership with a Canadian journal, Filigrane. We are planning to publish, once an year, a Coq-Héron issue in Canada and a Filigrane issue in France. Of course, a common language makes this project easier to accomplish. We also present summaries of The International Forum of Psychoanalysis, published in Stockholm, London and New York by the Scandinavian University Press and the International Federation of Psychoanalytical Societies, as well as summaries of Tempo Psicanalitico, published at Rio de Janeiro by the Sociedade de Psicanalise Iracy Doyle.

As all journals similar to ours, Le Coq-Héron has been through difficult moments. Each time, we were able to overcome them with the help of the unlimited credit given to us by our printer. Moreover, our authors have always accepted to give us their papers gratuitously. Nowadays, thanks to these basic conditions and funds given by the Centre National de Lettres and the Centre Etienne-Marcel, our budget is permanently balanced. Le Coq-Héron has thus published 145 issues and 9 working documents. Eight hundred to 1500 copies of each issue are printed, according to its general interest. Finally, we would like to mention our 300 subscribers from all over the world, who support us in their own precious way.

Judith Dupont,

Luiz Eduardo Prado de Oliveira

April 1999.