ON SECONDARY JOURNAL DYSFUNCTION 
                                                                                             Bernard Apfelbaum, PhD

                This was the preface to a collection of papers in a handout that accompanied 
                    “Beyond Dysfunction,” a workshop offered to therapists in California, 1979-1991.

          A preface is an introduction to a book. Being introduced to a book is different than being introduced to a person. You might admit that you hate to meet new people, but you will never admit that you hate to meet new books. You might admit that you will cross the street to avoid saying hello to someone you know, but you will never admit going out of your way to not encounter a book. Books clearly have the advantage.
           What gives books this advantage? Compared to people they seem harmless, defenseless, non-threatening. If you don't like a book you can put it down. If you like it you can spend all night with it without compromising yourself. This is what gives books the advantage. They look like they can be easily pushed around. They look like you are the one in charge. They look like they are not having a relationship with you.
           When you are introduced to a person you naturally tense up. But when you are introduced to a book you are never on your guard at all. Why? Because you don't think of it as a new relationship. You buy a book or you borrow one and your attitude toward it is: "This is for me." You feel like you own it, like you possess it.
           The truth is that the book owns you. Thinking that it is for you, you start reading it. Mysteriously, you put it down. Or, even more mysteriously, you don't look at it at all because you never seem to have the time. And you even feel guilty about this. This feeling of guilt is a classic clue to an oppressive relationship. That's just how you feel when you neglect your friends, relatives, spouse, children. But it is worse with books, because they are supposed to be for you. Supposedly, you don't owe them a thing.
           Now, a lot more suffering is caused by journals than by books, and this is ironic because it is the professional journals that have tried to save us from relationships with authors. Journal articles are supposed to be as free from the author's ego as newspaper stories. Except for their by-lines, the authors of journal articles are as invisible as newspaper reporters, and in both cases the idea is that the facts should speak for themselves.
           In other words, here is an instance in which the problem has been recognized. Journal editors think that if we had to have a relationship with an author we couldn't stand it. The invisible-author style is meant to protect us from all those authors' egos clamoring for our attention. This solution to the relationship between authors and readers is to get rid of the author.
           How well does this solution work? What happens is that articles without authors end up being articles without readers. What we get is individual egos that are still clamoring for our attention, but in ways that make it hard to pay attention. There is no way to get rid of the relationship between the author and the reader, although it is easy to make this relationship invisible.
           What the failure of this solution should tell us is that the problem is not author-reader relationship itself. The problem is that the author-reader relationship is so hard to detect. It already is largely invisible. To make it even more invisible makes it more rather than less oppressive -- because then there is no one to blame but ourselves. We think we should want to read a journal for its own sake. The result is that most people don't read journal articles but few people feel entitled to hate them. They usually feel guilty, imagining a professional elite who can easily take in whatever they want to. We think we shouldn't need a relationship. In short, we think we shouldn't need to be seduced.
           This is not only our theory of secondary journal dysfunction, that is, of journal dyslexia, a thus-far incurable condition, but it is also our theory of sexual disorders. The similarities between the two are that in both cases:
           1. Both require a yes response; neither can be easily refused.
           2. The conditions required to create a yes response are not well-known or easy to establish if they are not already present.
           3. Everyone thinks they should be able to respond automatically; the effects of a relationship on them are difficult to detect.