Obituary

Henning Paikin 21.9.1935–2.1.2017

Henning Paikin passed away on 2 January at the age of 81. During his last years, he suffered from Parkinson’s disease, but in spite of this he was occupied with and engaged in psychoanalysis and Danish Psychoanalytic Society till the end.

Henning Paikin graduated as a medical doctor in 1962 and trained as a psychiatrist. From 1974 to1997, he worked as a psychiatric consultant at Nordvang, a large psychiatric county hospital in the Copenhagen area, where he was in charge of an open ward and a day hospital, and where he held psychodynamic seminars for the young residents and psychologists. When psychotherapeutic knowledge became a compulsory part of the education of the residents, Henning Paikin took the task of educating and supervising them. Later on he established the so-called Balint groups for all the young doctors at the hospital, where they could share their often burdensome feelings and doubts in accomplishing their duties with acute psychotic patients.

Early in his life, still at school, Paikin became interested in psychoanalysis, and he was one of the first candidates in the Danish IPA-supported study group, which was founded in 1957 and which was the precursor of the later Danish Psychoanalytical Society. As a qualified psychoanalyst (in 1973) and training analyst (in 1978), he became one of the most influential and important contributors to the development of the Society. During his career, he held several important posts in the Society as well as internationally. He was a teacher of theoretical seminars and a supervising training analyst, a member of the training committee, the president of the Danish Society from 1985 to 1991 and again from 1997 to 2001, member of the IPA house of delegates and the IPA Ethics Committee, just to mention some of his activities.

A special interest of Henning Paikin was to promote psychoanalysis by communicating psychoanalysis in texts. He was himself a dedicated writer and published papers, for