Dear Friends from "ALL OVER THE WORLD"

00 12 22 Friday

This Newsletter is in the first place to wish ALL OUR READERS a very HAPPY CHRISTMAS, a nice holiday period and an HAPPY YEAR 2001.

At the same time I want to thank all of you who have sent me Birthday, Xmas and New Year greetings. It is sometimes difficult to understand for me that I will enter the year 2001, having arrived to be 81 years but……. I really cannot deny it. Although I have had some problems with my health I still feel quite optimistic as for the future and hope to be able to continue with my work with the Leopold Szondi Forum at least for some more years.

It is at present nearly four months ago that I returned from Alicante (Spain) to Sweden. I had to accept the insight that, although I learned to speak Spanish more or less fluently I still, during the rest of my live, never would become a competent Spanish translator. It is true that it felt for me somewhat as a defeat, but fortunately I could also point out to the fact that during “my Spanish year” I had succeeded to build up quite a whole new Latin section with many Spanish and Portuguese articles.

After my return in Sweden I had several times the pleasure to travel together with my wife Gunnel during short periods to Germany, where we visited Berlin and Potsdam. In those towns I spent a long time ago many adventures during the second World war. In Potsdam I visited the former “Gestapo Untersuchungshaft”, where I had been in prison in 1943 and unexpectedly had the astonishing good luck to get out after some difficult weeks. It was really quite funny to see the face of the employee of the Tourist service when I asked her about the exact location of the former Gestapo prison. I suppose she did not often did hear such a question before.

Later we visited also in West Germany, Münster, where I had worked as a hotel porter. In Bielefelt, I met Christian Papilloud, who assisted me before as a co-editor. He is at present a lecturer at the University in sociology and a great promoter of the ideas of George Simmel (http://www.simmel-de.da.ru/) whose sociological theories he tries to combine with the ideas of Szondi.

We also made a trip to Belgium where I met Dr. Bob Maebe in Bruxelles. He represents the new ideas of the Louvain School. He is still working with the development of his Computer program for scoring Szondi results, according to the Pathoanalytical principles, i.c.with the computer registration of the order of thefactor positions. etc. We had several times some very interesting discussions and at the same time could enjoy the excellent Belgium food. (After all our many trips in Europe, both my wife and I agree that the Belgium food is the best we know)

In the Netherlands we visited my Dutch friend Kees Mos, who is a protestant priest with very modern ideas. He is actively engaged in introducing Prof Nagy Family therapy, in clerical circles, by pointing out the possibility for priests to act as family therapy counsellors using Nagy’s approach. He has many creative ideas. An example is e.g. that he suggest sometimes his clients with marriage problems to read and use the books “the Gods /Goddesses in us” (which are based on Jung’s archetypes) as a kind of “self-analysis” and elemental personality description, in order to understand each other better. These insights facilitate his counselling work.

My original plans to visit the Szondi institute and Dr. Hans Jörg Ringger in Switserland were interrupted. While I was on my way to Cologne to visit my daughter who works there I got on the plane heart problems and had to be taken in at a Cologne Hospital. Instead of me visiting her, it was she who during a week visited me at the hospital.

Fortunately they could not find any serious heart conditions, but anyhow I had to fly back to Sweden. I got a kind of explaining blind-diagnosis by a woman friend of mine who is a medical doctor and Prof. In München, when I told her about the fact that the doctors could not find any serious causes she put explained my situation as a sudden influenza attack also had influenced also my heart muscles. Her comments made really sense and as you can understand, they contributed much that my wife, daughter and me felt much better and optimistic. So far about my health adventures.

As for Sweden: Rolf Kenmo, the industrial consult who originally started a Swedish Szondi questionnaire has extended his services in an international way by having this questionnaire translated into English. A few weeks ago he visited the Szondi institute where he successfully presented his work to Dr. Juettner and some other Szondi workers. Kenmo is also writing an, easy to read, popular introduction book to his test.

From Finland I got the following interesting information from Prof. Borg. He has written a book, that he presents in the following way:

“Szondi’s Personality Theory in The Year 2000. The author (b. 29.VIII.1927) has held appointments as Senior Lecturer and Docent in Psychology in the University of Tampere, Finland;- Longstanding member of the International Szondi Association - Szondi Award together with Professor R. Hughes - Currently Chairman of the Finnish Szondi Society.

Up to the year 2000 the validity and viability of the Szondi test has not been elicited in precise numerical terms, with the result that it has been generally abandoned except within the school itself. In this his latest book the author shows this situation to be a consequence of the excessively qualitative mode of scoring Szondi used, this involving a fateful loss of information. Here the ‘classic’ scoring system is replaced by a new, more predominantly quantitative approach. In experiments with identical twins (62 pairs) the author succeeded in establishing validity values for the Szondi test with his modernised scoring system. In defining differences and similarities in personality attributable to genetic factors the validity coefficient of Szondi´s test is on a par with that of the best projective tests, about r = .50. The test may thus well be re-adopted on a wider basis, and is indeed more than welcome, since no other approach is capable of achieving this level in assessing human personality traits of genetic provenance.

In the light of these new findings, Szondi´s genetic theory of personality is incontestably worthy of serious attention, also by merit of a number of innovative adjustments the present author proposes.

The book (in paperback) is available from the author. Price: 250 Fmk (42 euro).

Pälkäne, Finland 21.12.2000

From Romania: I got news from Nicu Dumatrasco, szondi@home.ro,the secretary of the Rumanian Szondi group. He works as a lecturer at the Psychology Department of the University of Bucharest where he promotes the ideas of Szondi. He is at present translating Ann Gayray’s interesting article: ESSAI D’INNOVATION, LA DIFFUSION DU SZONDI, that he will publish in the Rumanian Journal of Psychology. As the Rumanians have been very isolated from other European schools and Szondi groups it might be that some of you could give him some comments/advice in connection to what he writes about his studies:

>I am in the second year of my graduate studies at Bucharest University, and my dissertation focuses on studying the delusions of paranoid schizophrenics through several projective methods (Rorschach, Szondi, Draw-a-Person and Tree Test) . More specifically, I am interested in comparing the paranoids with expansive (inflative) delusion to the ones with depressive (projective) delusions. I am fascinated by the Szondi's idea that the axis inflation- projection represents an anthropological constant of human being, and I am curious what are the imagistic symbols that accompanies each of this condition and how the projection of the psychotic contents appears at Rorschach<

From Slavick Shibayev (Odessa) I get news that he is looking for a programmer job in West-Europe. He is a great specialist in this field. In case any of you has contacts that might help him to find such a job let him know, he certainly would appreciate it. His e-mail adress is: slavick@consul.com.ua. Slavick assists me regularly with transferring the actual articles to the Szondi Forum.

Now and then I get from different parts of the world questions or comments, which I mainly answer directly by e-mail. I am always glad to get news from South and Middle America where, especially the Brazilian Szondi group is very enthusiastic making use of the Szondi Forum.

As for my own home based work with the Forum I work at present with translating some articles of Jean Mélon into Swedish. However next year I will continue to translate some important articles about Szondi from German or French into English.

Well I hope this message finds you all in the best of conditions and I want to finish referring as Jean Mélons once expressed:

>THAT WHAT UNITE US AND PUSH US AHEAD IS

THE FEELING THAT WE FILL A NECESSARY MISSION<

GOOD LUCK TO YOU ALL!

Your editor Leo Berlips,

Falkenberg, West Coast of Sweden.