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This article explores the dialogical collaboration and friendship between Martti Siirala and Gaetano Benedetti, particularly in the development of the psychotherapy of schizophrenia and the human psychotherapeutic attitude toward carrying and sharing burdens. Siirala and Benedetti outlined a psychotherapy that considers existential and philosophical dimensions alongside the clinical aspects of illness, without being bound by schools of thought, authorities, or doctrinal systems. The main material in the article is based on documents from the Martti Siirala archive, the most important of which is the German-language correspondence between Siirala and Benedetti after Siirala moved back to Finland from Switzerland at the end of 1957. Benedetti's activities in Basel are also illuminated by descriptions sent to Siirala by nurse Aino Kärkkäinen of her experiences in Switzerland in the late 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns the therapeutic potential of metaphor in group poetry therapy, concentrating on the poetry therapy process of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The data was collected in a one-year poetry therapy group. The main questions were: (1) What kind of therapeutic potential can metaphors offer in group poetry therapy? (2) What are the personal meanings and evaluations that the participants give to the therapy process and its effects on their lives? (3) What are the most significant elements in poetry therapy from the viewpoint of the client? The analysis was based on the Grounded theory method. The results showed that the most significant therapeutic factors of the process were social interaction, safety, and written self-expression. Writing in a group setting, especially through collaborative writing, had many positive effects on the clients. It allowed them to experience life's worth raising their hope. Metaphors and collaborative writing made it possible to discuss difficult personal experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuropsychoanalysis focuses on the neural counterparts of psychoanalytically interesting phenomena and has left the difference in the metaphysical presuppositions between neuroscience and psychoanalysis unexamined. The authors analyse the logical possibilities concerning the relation between the brain and the mental unconscious in terms of the serial, parallel, epiphenomenalist and Kantian conceptions, and conclude that none of them provides a satisfactory ground for neuropsychoanalysis. As far as psychoanalytic explanations refer to the mental unconscious, they cannot be verified with the help of neuroscience. Neither is it possible to form a picture of how a neuro-viewpoint might be of help for psychoanalytic theorizing. Neuropsychoanalysis has occasionally been seen as a reductionist affair, but the authors suggest that neuropsychoanalysts themselves lean on the hybrid conception, which combines neuroscientific and psychoanalytic viewpoints. The authors state arguments in favour of the interfield conception of neuropsychoanalysis that takes seriously the metaphysical tensions between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martti Olavi Siirala, psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, and a dissident in terms of Finnish cultural life, died in Helsinki on August 18, 2008, at the age of 85. He was born in Liperi, eastern Finland, on November 24, 1922. This obituary outlines his life, professional career, and literary production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between neuroscience and psychoanalysis is studied by taking "the new mechanism of neuroscience" under scrutiny. That new trend stresses that neuroscientific explanations are mechanistic explanations in particular. Since the issue of psychological mechanisms lies at the core of psychoanalysis, it is crucial to study the relationship between neural and psychological mechanisms. The authors argue that neuroscience cannot verify psychoanalytic theories. However, by combining neuroscientific and psychoanalytic (psychological) viewpoints, it will be possible to approach a more holistic picture of psychological phenomena, here suggested by a new conception of defense mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The archive and psychoanalysis are reconnected in a new framework. The archaeological metaphor of psychoanalysis, the traditional view of archives as storehouses of historical items, and the notion of memory as storage are revised according to the conceptions of fluid and dynamic archival and memory systems. A combination of psychoanalytic models and cognitive memory research is proposed to form developmental archival theory that will take into account the changing contexts of memory, meaning-making, negotiation of interpretation, and knowledge regulation. The three phases of registration (archivalization, archivization, and archiving) are seen in the dynamics of unconsciousness-consciousness, and in relation to the archivists' and researchers' transferences to their records as self-objects, transitional objects or evocative objects. Becoming conscious of archives is a continuous journeying through the multiple registrations and narrativizations of archives in the interaction between non-declarative and declarative memory. The archive and psychoanalysis touch upon processes that are suggested to concern metamemory and metareflection (the interplay between meta-emotion and metacognition). The futures of archives and psychoanalysis call for context-sensitive remembering and being attentive to the co-constructive translations of personal and social memory. Opening archives and psychoanalysis toward the unprecedented, without closing histories and memories, is the interminable task of encountering the "missing moment." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of stories in biblio-poetry therapy practice and in enhancing personal development is the focus of this paper. Writing, telling and listening to stories open up possibilities for change and new learning windows. Through expressive and communicative stories, therapeutic and developmental dia- and polylogism can expand one's imaginative space and perspectives of action in a “holding framework” and even in virtual communities. Rewriting previous “truth stories” moves and modifies one's conceptions of self, others and life relations. The inhibitions, failures and dislocations inherent in storytelling also provide valuable experiential and experimental touching/moving knowledge. The presence of the “imagined reader” and the “internal supervisor” in the writing process can help in reflecting, evaluating and steering, through meta-emotional and metacognitive processes, one's own and others’ needs, aspirations and goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institution of psychoanalysis has included controversies, dissensions and expulsions at both the theoretical-methodological and personal-organizational levels. There have also been several intra- and intergroup conflicts in the history of psychoanalysis, and in constructing and patterning the future of psychoanalytic knowledge. In the context of Finnish psychoanalysis, the Therapeia Foundation (founded in 1958) met from the start with resistance from official psychiatry and also from the IPA. For example, in the mid-1960s, D. W. Winnicott, as the President of the IPA, supported the orthodox Finnish psychoanalytic study group (later to become the Finnish Psychoanalytical Society), and pronounced that the Therapeia group was too loose and was not strictly able to use the IPA-recognized designation "psychoanalytic." The Therapeia Foundation and its Training Seminar combined classical psychoanalysis and its new versions with existentialphenomenological views, anthropological medicine, research on "social pathology" and even modern theological research. On the basis of their Swiss analytic training, three Finnish psychiatrists, Martti Siirala, Kauko Kaila and Allan Johansson, organized Therapeian training to incorporate sciences and arts, and skills involving the therapeutic "carrying" of burdens. The multifacted nature of open psychoanalysis was seen to find its proper organizational expression when the Training Seminar of the Therapeia Foundation became, in 1974, a Member of the IFPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Storytelling and active listening in interaction processes have been a vital core of biblio/poetry therapy long before current 'narrative therapies.' The invention of the self and others through expressive resources inherent in language is incorporated in this article within biblio/poetry therapy. Especially poetic communication conveys, through texts, 'transformative' transferences and countertransferences that foster the creative imagination, 'dancing with words.' The author also proposes that there can be 'static' textual transferences and countertransferences that maintain a monological stalemate, a desert of words. Biblio/poetry therapy is seen as a performance scene where co-tellings, co-constructions and co-interpretations of life intermingle, and create shifting worlds of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response by Vesa Talvitie and Juhani Ihanus to a letter to the editor about their article "On neuropsychoanalytic metaphysics" in the 2011 issue is presented.

A response from the authors of the article regarding the explanation of psychoanalysts on how the mental unconscious could cause disorders is presented.