Reports and Brief Communications

Theme: Interpretation and Interaction

I like Sweden, better to say it immediately. There were about fifty of us, Finns, Swedes and Norwegians from Saturday morning to Sunday evening at the Ekerö Conference Center near Stockholm. The place gave the impression of the Royal Family's country mansion.

I especially liked the second part of the theme, interaction, because I find it a neglected area in psychoanalysis. Dr. Christer Sjödin from the Swedish Society was the main speaker and the commentators were Kjell-Petter Bøgwald from Norway and Mikko Roine from Finland.

It was a real pleasure to listen to Dr. Sjödins personal, creative and thought-provoking presentation. It clearly inspired also his commentators. I really hope that Dr. Sjödins paper, or at least parts of it, will be published in this journal!

On Saturday afternoon there were four parallel discussion groups. Each group had a clinical case presented by Signe Bente Madsen, Norway, Jan Stensson, Sweden, Heimo Salminen, Finland and Bengt Warren, Sweden.

My case was not a closed one but an on-going therapy. My patient suffers form chronic paranoic schizophrenia and as you can easily guess, I am facing many difficulties as his therapist. It was a valuable and eyeopening experience to present a case and get supervision from an international group of analysts.

My discussion group was conducted by Monica Andersson from Sweden. Her style of conducting reminded me of Balint-groups, particularly prismatic ones which are popular supervision groups in Finland and familiar to me.

I am very grateful to the group and to Monica! The discussion helped both me and my patient. Dr. Lennart Ramberg from the Swedish Society seemed to be able to guess what will take place in the therapy in the near future. (By the way, he has recently written a book “Tänkbart” published by Mareld, Stockholm). Special thanks to you, Lennart!

When after this I succeeded in getting my favourite dish at