Psych-e-News: Guidelines for Writers

FOR AUTHORS:
It may be helpful to you to know something of the magazine’s history and mission before you begin writing your article, so we have summarized that below.


WHAT PSYCHE-E-NEWS IS:
An electronic magazine that offers helpful, psychoanalytically conceived articles on topics of current concern to the general public. The Division of Psychoanalysis at NYSPA (New York State Psychological Association) sponsors this project. We now have our own website and are also hosted on NYSPA's website. The project was initially funded by a Scholar’s Grant from the NYU Postdoctoral Program’s Psychoanalytic Society.


HISTORY
This project emerged from a committee at NYU Postdoctoral Program addressing the public’s view of psychoanalysis, which was seen as outmoded and negatively biased by the media, insurance companies, and current trends in academic psychology.

The committee decided to launch a project that would allow a direct outlet from the inner scholarly and clinical thought of psychoanalysis directly to its targeted public. The committee decided that one good way to inform the “public mind” about psychoanalysis is to show psychoanalytic thought helpfully at work.

The project was adopted by the New York State Psychological Association, Division of Psychoanalysis, who now oversees its ongoing work. NYSPA will develop it further as seems suitable. Housing it at NYSPA ensures that it has an inter-institute, collaborative basis.


MISSION STATEMENT
The magazine’s s goals are three-fold:

First, we seek to provide direct benefit to the public. We intend our articles to be helpful.

Second, we seek to alter the public perception of psychoanalysis by demonstrating the direct benefit and value of contemporary psychoanalysis to ordinary people in everyday life. We do NOT attempt to preach or tell people directly of the value of psychoanalysis nor to educate people directly about psychoanalysis.

Third, we hope to bring together different psychoanalytic institutes by using NYSPA as the umbrella. We want this to be an integrative effort that counters the historical tendency of schools of psychoanalysis to splinter off.. 

Reader Profile
Our targeted readers are thoughtful people who are curious about psychology, but not necessarily well versed in any particular psychological area. Our goal is to give our readers some or all of the following:

-Psychological insights
-Pleasure and stimulation
-Different perspectives on psychological difficulties

Reader Outcome Goal
To engage with the articles, and to show that engagement by:

-Clicking on our links
-Writing to our editor
-Telling their friends
-Asking for copies of our articles

Psych-e-News: Specific Guidelines for Authors

We greatly value the talents and expertise of our guest writers and seek to form continued collegial and collaborative relationships with them.  In order to ensure that we maintain integrity as a professional work, it is necessary that the magazine be published in a reliable and timely fashion.

Authors are therefore asked to observe all deadlines. If you have agreed to be an author, and for any reason anticipate a difficulty meeting the deadline, we ask that you discuss this with the Issue Editor as soon as possible so that any necessary accommodations can be made. 

Types of Articles

Typically, each issue will be organized around a central theme. The central theme can be any topic that allows for rich psychological/psychoanalytic explorations.

As a stylistic guideline, we have grouped desirable articles into the following categories. We realize that some, maybe most, of our articles will not fit neatly into one alone, but our aim is to give our writers some sense of what we are looking for. To illustrate this, our example offers three different treatments of Bereavement.  Not listed in order of importance, they include:

A) “How To” Article: Difficulty identified, possible solution offered.
A more straight-forward type of piece, this article would describe the loss of a loved one and offer various practical therapeutic options on how best to deal with it.

B) Narrative Article: Difficulty presented within the context of a story.
A more literary treatment, this article would lead the reader into the world of the bereaved and how events, people, and circumstances affected the grieving process.

C) Empirical Article: Difficulty described by current research data.
A basically quantitative reporting, this article would discuss aspects of the bereavement literature and offer the reader an empirical understanding of the relevant issues.

Though designed to convey information, an effective article avoids a pedantic or overtly didactic tone. It does not attempt to speak directly of the value of psychoanalysis nor to educate people directly about psychoanalysis. Rather, articles demonstrate the value of psychoanalytic thinking by viewing a problem of everyday living through a psychoanalytic lens, but without the jargon of an academic journal article.

Psychoanalysis is both a psychotherapeutic technique as well as a way of thinking about people and how they operate psychologically. Psych-e-News deals primarily with the latter. The focus of the articles is not on what goes on during a psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic session and is not designed to demonstrate how any psychoanalyst works clinically.

Articles should show the complex and nuanced psychoanalytic understanding of problems in living, in a manner that is accessible to the “public”.  We embrace a wide spectrum of readers and communicative dimensions and welcome innovative ideas and formats. 

Our articles should capture whatever psychological subtleties the author is trying to convey in easily accessible language.


Format

Articles are short: from 250 to 1000 words.  Style is up to you, but we look for that combination of complex and nuanced psychoanalytic expertise along with accessible, clear, plain-language expression. We strongly encourage multidimensional discussions – that is, discussions that include more than one dimension of the topic, and how they interrelate.  We want the conceptual to be concretely instantiated. Specific real-world examples are most often effective.

We require a brief bio – e.g. author’s name, affiliations, websites, publications, and office location.

We require each writer to provide us with at least one internet link either to other work of the author, or related information on the internet – another website, organization, etc. 

Articles should be submitted in Word Verdana 12.

Process

Two co-editors, or in some cases one editor,  will oversee each issue of the magazine. Most often, at least one of these Issue Editors will be a member of the Psych-e-News Editorial Board. Guest authors will work closely with one of the Issue Editors so that the final draft of the article meets the guideline specifications. Since most of our guest writers do not have experience writing psychoanalytically for the public, it has been our experience that a few drafts will be necessary before the article reaches its final form.

Unless otherwise specified, authors should email all drafts of their articles to the Issue Editor to whom they have been assigned.