Letter from Oslo

Several Norwegian analysts trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute established a Norwegian psychoanalytic society (IPA-membership 1934). Due to the emergence of Nazism, Wilhelm Reich and Otto Fenichel ended up in Oslo in 1933/4. Their importance for the development of Norwegian psychoanalysis became immense and dramatic. The IPA Congress in 1949 was a disaster for Norwegian psychoanalysis: exclusion from the IPA. Only after many years did the Norwegian society regain its IPA membership in 1975. Norway's first Professor of psychology, Harald Schjelderup, entering his professorship in 1928, was a psychoanalyst, trained in Vienna. Establishing the depth psychological method as a specific scientific method, Schjelderup's main academic project was the integration of psychoanalysis with general psychological science. Ever since, the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society has maintained a close relationship with the university. During the last twenty years, Norwegian analysts have developed a most successful programme for psychoanalytic psychotherapy in China and participated in training the first Chinese analysts approved by IPA. Thus, they have made a substantial contribution to the IPA-psychoanalytic training in China, resulting in the establishment of the IPA study group in 2022. The inner life of the Norwegian Society has also renewed an enthusiasm through its development of a new training analyst system.