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In the fall of 1998, The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review announced an award for the most impressive psychoanalytic articles.
The jury comprised Judy Gammelgaard (Denmark), Karin Michal (Sweden), Helge Sletvold and Anders Zachrisson (Norway), Antti Kumen to and Henrik Enckell (Finland). Authorship remained anonymous for the jury, whose members did not evaluate papers deriving from their own countries.
The jury was surprised, and pleased, to note that no less than 18 manuscripts were received before the deadline. The standard of the papers was considered high.
The winner of the competition was Gunnar Karlsson, with a paper entitled “The truth claims in psychoanalysis”, and published in this issue.
Throughout, the members of the jury rated this manuscript highly, and justified its decision in the following way:
“The question of truth claims in psychoanalysis” is in many respects a praiseworthy psychoanalytic paper. Its subject matter the character of truth in psychoanalytic work – is of topical importance, and the paper deals with this question in a through-going and original way. In the first part of the paper, the writer reviews historical attempts to resolve this question, doing this through – on the one hand – the concepts of narrative and historical truth, and on the other, through the concepts of construction and reconstruction. This first part of the paper shows considerable thoroughness, but also the writer's ability to focus. In the second part of the paper, the writer gives his own answer and synthesis; he shows the constructed character of the reality investigated by psychoanalysis, at the same time as illuminating how this reality is grounded beyond any arbitrary perspective. In a fruitful manner