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In the autumn of 1986, Lars-Johan Schalin published a book entitled “Narsismin Kohtaloita” (The Destinies of Narcissism). Although originally written in Swedish and earlier published in The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review in volume 2/No. 2/1979, volume 6/No. 1/1983, and volume 8/No. 2/1985, it is now published in Finnish in a slightly modified form. This
fact was an affirmative result of publishing politics, and one cannot but hope that it will also be published in other Scandinavian languages so as to be available to a larger non-professional Scandinavian public.
The first of the articles republished is “On the problem of envy. Social, clinical and theoretical considerations” from 1979. This article contains some provocative considerations on the drives behind revolutionary movements, represented here by the French Revolution, which, as Schalin puts it, is so distant in time that we can look at it and analyse it unemotionally. He also makes an interesting analysis of Ibsen's “Hedda Gabler” as a person tormented by a great narcissistic deficit and thus also by a devouring envy, causing death and destruction to herself as well as to those related to her.
The next article on “The development of men” contains Schalin's most extensive theoretical contributions because of the new concepts he introduces, the concept of the “Good enough father” and the concept of “Phallic integration”. These concepts are penetrating, i.e., they are easily understood, and although new, they easily fit into classic theory, thus giving them metatheoretical and metapsychological justification.
However, there are some direct clinical considerations which are of importance in clinical work. We see that the intrapsychic world and development of men, if not completely abolished in recent decades, has at least been severely neglected. Why do we think that the development of a boy into a man is more easily understood and explained than a girl's development into a woman?
Anyhow, Schalin's contributio