Editorial

In August 2008, the Nordic Psychoanalytic Congress took place in Stockholm, Sweden. The Congress was a great success, not the least socially. The pleasure of a biannual reunion with colleagues and old friends, and of meeting with new friends, was perhaps heightened by the Congress theme: “Love, tenderness, drive and transference”.

The two first articles in this issue of The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review are edited versions of plenary presentations from the Nordic Congress. They approach the theme of love in different ways: Anders Zachrisson's point of departure in “Neutrality, tenderness and the analyst's subjectivity: reflections on the analytic relationship” is the vagaries of love in the psychoanalytic relationship, whereas Esa Roos elucidates on love, in “Some thoughts on happy and unhappy love”, by applying a range of theoretical and expressive perspectives, from metapsychology to poetry. As the authors get more deeply involved in their common topic, there is considerable overlap in content.

The noted difference in form conveys one aspect of the richness of the Nordic conferences, in which there is typically a mix of, on the one hand, a consensus on basic psychoanalytic theoretical perspectives, and, on the other, refreshing originality in individual analysts. I hesitate to elaborate on national differences in psychoanalytic writing styles, but I have a long-standing impression that the farther away from the psychoanalytic centers that are important to all of us — the UK, USA, and perhaps France, today, and central Europe in the past (our pages show that the Scandinavian psychoanalytic writers generally have not forgotten Freud) — the more creative the writing seems to be. There is at least a correlation between this geographical distance and quantity: during my first year as Editor-in-Chief, our Finnish colleagues have been our greatest suppliers of material, by far. If, as is my unchecked impression, this outpour is strengthened by one or more ongoing writ