Editorial

One important task for the International Forum of Psychoanalysis is to initiate and take part in discussions on subjects that are of importance for psychoanalytic work and for the members of IFPS.

In the editorial board in Stockholm we have discussed two possible issues of interest. One is to begin a discussion about Daniel Stern's facts and theories on child development, and their influence on clinical psychoanalytic work. Psychoanalysis has to be in a constant dialogue with different academic domains and empirical research in both medicine and academic psychology. We will return to this issue later on.

Another cluster of questions of immediate interest are related to the costs and different ways of financing psychoanalytic treatment.

In all western countries there is an increasing engagement in the topic of the costs of medical treatment. According to Arnold Relman (1) there is a shift of paradigm affecting medicine to the same degree as the introduction of scientific medicine at the beginning of this century and the building up of socio-medical security systems during the fifties. The new paradigm demands that every branch of medicine motivates its existence and its costs. This leads to new demands on methods for assessment of treatment forms and results. This revolution will also affect psychoanalysis. So far the consequences for our discipline have hardly been discussed at all.

In many countries psychoanalytic treatment is more or less integrated in medical finance systems, either of a general welfare-health care type or in the form of private insurance schedules. The rules of these financing systems have a direct effect on the frames of the psychoanalytic work. They also influence the relation between analyst and patient since a third party is introduced into the consulting room.

We can now expect that new demands will be raised on psychoanalysis to motivate its methods, e.g. as to frequency of sessions and total length of treatment.

This influence from outside prom