PEP has been working with journal editors, publishers, and other colleagues in the psychoanalytic community to develop secure and thoughtful guidelines for the publication of clinical material. We recognise that the sharing of details of psychoanalytic work is vital to the future of practice, but also that it carries a profound responsibility to protect patients.
In 2023, following these consultations, the PEP Board of Directors adopted an anonymisation policy designed to support both aims. The consensus from discussions was that the most reliable safeguard—for patients now and in the future, and for the discipline of psychoanalysis—was to make anonymisation a routine expectation for all published clinical material. Accordingly, from January 1st, 2024, all new material appearing on PEP-Web is required to meet a rigorous set of anonymisation principles, intended to balance patient protection with the preservation of meaningful clinical insight.
PEP does not seek to prescribe a single method for achieving anonymisation. We recognise that clinical contexts vary and that authors and editors will need to exercise judgement in how best to meet the standard. What is essential is that no patient, nor any third party, can reasonably identify a patient described in published material.
All journals publishing new content on PEP-Web have agreed to develop and report on the processes by which they align with this policy.
Finally, the PEP Board emphasises that the anonymisation policy should not stand in the way of important work on race, gender, and other intersectional issues in psychoanalytic practice. We have asked journal editors to work closely with authors to ensure that safeguarding patient anonymity does not unintentionally limit the depth and seriousness with which these crucial dimensions of clinical life are explored.