In June 2022, after a two-and-a-half-year COVID-19 hiatus, I joyfully returned to Europe for a research trip. My purpose was to develop further my next monograph on queering animal symbols, specifically investigating the history of the Dalecarlian (Dala) horse [Dalahäst]. Dala horses are brightly painted wooden toys that were carved and decorated by farmers through the long Swedish winters as early as the seventeenth century. Thereafter, Dala horses became a national icon and symbol of Sweden at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. Scheduling also allowed me to attend Midsommar (Midsummer) celebrations in Dalarna (Dalecarlia) County,1 Sweden (Fig. 1). This is the region not only where Dala horses first appeared, but also where many of the traditions surrounding the folkloric, highly theatrical, and now de facto Swedish national holiday of Midsommar most likely originated.

The emerging global climate crisis threatens human health in unprecedented ways, yet global health concerns have not been sufficiently considered within international climate change efforts. A more collaborative pathway could advance efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change while protecting public health and social justice.

Impact factor (IF) is a concept dating back over half a century, created to evaluate the impact of a journal within a particular scientific field. In spite of limitations, IF remains a widely used metric for journals to establish the average number of citations for articles published in a journal. The Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine (IJPM) recently received an IF of 5.1, the first IF for the journal. We believe that this is a reflection of the hard work and dedication of our authors, reviewers, publishers and editorial board. The IJPM is the official research journal of the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, and while psychiatry is the primary discipline of the journal, the current multidisciplinary approach will continue into the future. The journal has a strong Irish and international readership; while the journal will continue to publish research with an Irish focus, the editorial team are aware of the importance of ongoing global contributions to ensure the journal maintains high-quality publications of an international standard. This is an exciting time to be involved in mental health research, and the journal will continue to publish cutting edge themes with the goal of improving mental healthcare in Ireland and beyond.

In The Architectonic of Reason, Lea Ypi provides an illuminating and innovative interpretation of the Architectonic in the first Critique. Ypi argues that Kant’s project of uniting practical and theoretical uses of reason in a critical metaphysics ultimately fails because practical reason does not have its own domain in which to legislate. This article challenges Ypi’s objection to practical reason’s lack of a domain in the first Critique. Its main contention is that reason’s need for unity in legislation may be satisfied by a belief in God as a necessary practical presupposition rather than a dogmatic metaphysical reality.

American Jewish writers Mary Antin and Jessie Sampter met as teenagers in 1899. Throughout the next four decades, they wrote letters and visited each other, discussing literature, politics, and life. Independently, both women achieved some professional success. Antin’s autobiography, The Promised Land, launched her to national fame, before she withdrew from public life to focus on religious pursuits. Sampter supported Zionist efforts from the United States, then moved to Palestine. Both women experimented with religious thought and intentional communities. Both women were disabled: Antin struggled with her mental and physical health; Sampter also struggled with mental health and had post-polio syndrome.

Drawing on Antin and Sampter’s correspondence with each other and with others, this article argues that their friendship was a crucial part of their subjectivity, their intellectual development, and their religious creativity. Intimacy and relationality were not merely supplementary to the real work of solitary thinkers but key for these women’s intellectual and spiritual development. In studying Antin and Sampter’s friendship, we suggest that studying disabled thinkers provides a lens for all significant friendships, in which each partner admits and permits vulnerability and each brings what they can. Their relationship points us to the importance of analyzing how bodies and vulnerability work in all friendships, and how the interdependence of non-romantic friendships can be essential to women’s creative work as religious thinkers and practitioners. Antin and Sampter’s friendship also demonstrates how religious thought happens within relationships, rather than being solely created by an autonomous, isolated subject.