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After opening the book, one finds on the first page before the list of authors, the motto: “Speaking of old age, people assume a solemn countenance, as if they were guests in the funeral service.” On the next page is the list of the authors: Mikael Enckell, Erna Furman, Robert A. Furman, Tor-Björn Hägglund, Vilja Hägglund and Pentti Ikonen. One can suggest that those training analysts, who have reached old age or are aproaching it, would, in the following pages like to describe old age and supposedly try to avoid the mood of the funeral service. The title of the book: “Vanhaset”, gives a clue to the way the authors prefer to treat their subject: the book's name is constructed from the diminutive of the word “vanha” i.e. old.
The title, however, can lead the prospective reader astray, if he has settled down to discover some item which indicates how to treat the subject lightly. The reader soon notices, that if the authors have succeeded in avoiding solemnity, it is not achieved by resorting to the light-hearted handling of ageing.
When I leafed through the first and last pages of the book, I found the final section of the book interesting: three short stories about old age by the editor of the book engaged my mind positively and I was not disappointed when I had read them.
The very last chapter of the book is the list of psychoanalytical studies on ageing and consists of 12 titles. The previous chapter of the book is an ample catalogue of 85 titles referring to ageing in fiction. Possibly the difference in sizes of these two lists gives a hint of how old age is easier to view from an artistic standpoint than from a scientific one, although the science concerned is that which has at its foundations, the wish to share feelings. Having posed the question of the length of these lists, it was no surprise to note that the authors of the book are renowned in addition to their work in psychoanalysis, in the field of art: either as artists or in their relationship to art the