Power of Understanding

Veikko Tahka received his psychoanalytic training in Stockholm in the 1950s and worked at the Austen Riggs Center from 1959 to 1961 and again from 1987 to 1989. Although his framework does not belong to any particular psychoanalytic school, he is internationally known and respected. He has published four books and over one hundred articles in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychiatry, including 'Mind and Its Treatment: A Psychoanalytic Approach' (1993) and 'Power of Understanding: Essays in Honour of Veikko Tahka' (2004).

• Foreword -- Psychoanalytic understanding and psychoanalytic therapy: Veikko Tähkä’s contributions -- A Festschrift for Veikko Tähkä—2003 -- “Dissidence” in psychoanalysis: a psychoanalytic reflection -- Illusion and reality in the psychoanalytic relationship -- Transference: an historical and present-day perspective -- Actualized unconscious fantasies and “therapeutic play” in adults’ analyses: further study of these concepts -- The past in the present: a case vignette -- Sexualities and neosexualities -- Father makes a difference -- Dreams in the therapeutic relationship -- A brief inquiry into the value of man -- The religions of health and beauty -- Descartes’ cogito as a model of reality -- The conceptual space of psychoanalysis -- On the conditions of understanding -- On the idea of a new developmental object in psychoanalytic treatment -- When mother wasn’t there to be left

/>Contributors: Henrik Enckell, Mikael Enckell, Terttu Eskelinen, Pere Folch, Pentti Ikonen, Otto F. Kernberg, Pearl King, Leena Klockars, Aira Laine, Johannes Lehtonen, Joyce McDougall, Eero Rechardt, Simo Salonen, Anne-Marie Sandler, Riitta Tahka, Robert S. Wallerstein, Vamik D.Volkan, Jukka Valimaki.