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The Danish Psychoanalytic society was established as a component society of the IPA in 1957. To mark its fifty-year anniversary, leading members of the Danish society took the initiative to produce a Festschrift, which was published in 2007 under the title The actuality of psychoanalysis. Twelve analysts, all members of the Danish Society, have contributed to it. They present clinical and scientific projects that they and other Danish psychoanalysts have been engaged in throughout the history of the Danish Society.
Bent Rosenbaum is the author of the first chapter, “Psychoanalysis. Raising a bulwark against a reductionistic view on clinical work and culture” [Psykoanalysen. Erkjennelsesfeld og bolværk mot et reduksjonistisk syn på klinikk og kultur]. He describes the interdisciplinary nature of psychoanalysis and its great power as a mode of gaining insight into various phenomena that are impossible to understand without it, emphasising the importance of repetition as a fundamental phenomenon underlying various forms of psychopathology as well as specific social-cultural manifestations. Psychoanalysis can help us understand how difficulties and destructive forces and complex structures in a given society derive from unconscious processes in the inhabitants. Rosenbaum's position is intersubjectivistic and research oriented. Subject and object influence each other reciprocally and create new transformations. His original and thought-provoking essay underlines that psychoanalysis as a scientific discipline is not a static theory, but under continuous development. Both diagnostics and treatment rationales have changed and become more complex and differentiated during recent decades. New concepts have been introduced while others have been rejected as a result of new research and findings. The next chapter, “Psychoanalytic practice: two current developmental projects” [Psykoanalytisk praksis, to igangværende utviklingsprosjekter] is written by Stefan Balint and Otto Nyebo