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Jarl Wahlström:

Risto Fried – teacher, researcher and psychoanalytic scholar at the University of Jyväskylä

Presentation at the seminar ‘Fried, Freud ja psykoanalyysi’ on May 24, 2013 in Jyväskylä, Finland

This oral presentation is compiled from published and unpublished texts written by Risto Fried and in some instances co-writers. Due to the nature of the presentation I have not indi-cated references or citations in the text in a manner that would be appropriate in a scientific article. I hope no offense is taken for this. All sources are listed in the Bibliography. I wish to thank Arja Fried and Jukka Kaartinen for providing sources to which I would not otherwise have had access.

My first encounter with Risto Fried was indirect. When doing my psychology intern-

ship at the Lastenlinna Hospital in Helsinki in 1971 I was introduced by my supervi-

sor to some new procedures in using projective techniques. Only later I came to

know that these procedures had been presented to her by Fried in the summer of

1965. It was ten years later that I would meet the man himself during three consecu-

tive summers on courses in projective techniques in Hailuoto and Oulanka. This lead

to a closer contact and in 1985 I enrolled at the Department of Psychology at the

University of Jyväskylä to work together with him as an assistant teacher and lectur-

er.

Family background

Christopher Fried, later Risto Fried, was born in Paris on June 3, 1930. He was the

only child of Theodor and Anne Fried (née Politzer). Both descending from Jewish

families, the father Theo was a Hungarian born artist, and the mother Anne an Aus-

trian born graduate in literature from the University of Heidelberg. They had met

when Anne visited Paris in 1927. Because of the political situation in Europe, Anne

decided to emigrate to the U.S.A. with her then eight year old son. Theo stayed in

France, where he took part in the resistance against the Nazi occupation. When he,

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after the war, moved to the U.S.A. to join his family it became evident that the mar-

riage had come to an end, and Risto’s parents divorced.

After entering the U.S. Anne Fried first worked as a teacher, and later, after having

received an M.A. in sociology, within the field of social work. Still later, after having

moved to Finland in 1969, she became well-known and highly valued as a writer and

essayist. Theo Fried continued his career as a painter.

Educational years

In an interview for the psychology students’ magazine Narsisti, conducted by Leena

Tanskanen and Eila Tunkkari in the early 1990’s, Fried praised the level of education

he received at the École de Garcons at Montrouge, France. The teaching in French

history and literature at this primary school matched, in his experience, the one given

at North American colleges. He had, for instance, read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserablés

before the age of eight. Because of the high quality of his early education he was

advanced two years within the American school system, and entered the famous

Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, Pa., in the year 1946, only sixteen years old.

In Swarthmore, after having tried philosophy and political science, he chose psy-

chology as his major field, and graduated as B.A. with high honors in 1950. Wolf-

gang Köhler, the famous Gestalt theorist, was at that time professor of psychology,

and Solomon Asch, most well-known for his conformity experiments, professor of

social psychology. Later Fried described Swarthmore as an outstandingly democratic

and egalitarian educational institution. The teaching was given in small seminar

groups with no more than eight students, and the relationship between professors

and students was coequal and fraternal.

From Swarthmore Fried went to pursue postgraduate studies at the University of

Kansas at Lawrence, Kansas. Here, in a very different social milieu from the U.S.

East coast, he stayed only for one year, already teaching an introductory course in

experimental psychology. Then, in 1951, he entered Harvard University, at Cam-

bridge, Mass.

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At Harvard Fried took courses with such eminent scholars as Gordon Allport, Talcott

Parsons, Daniel Levinson, and, above all, Henry A. Murray. He worked as a member

of the research team which, under the direction of Murray, explored the personalities

of a group of twenty university students over a period of several years. Majoring in

clinical psychology, he did his internship at the Brattlebo Retreat Hospital, doing di-

agnostic testing and individual and group psychotherapy with neurotic and psychotic

patients. He gained further professional experience from the U.S. Veteran Admin-

istration Hospitals in Brockton and Bedford, Mass. He received his Ph.D. at Harvard

in 1957, the topic of his dissertation being the psychogenesis of paranoid delusions

in women.

In the Narsisti interview Fried described the psychotherapy training at Harvard as

mainly Rogerian. He pronounced himself as having been at that time critical of

Freudian psychoanalysis, and leaning more towards the humanistic emphasis of Ge-

stalt psychology. After the internship experience, though, his orientation changed, as

he encountered symptoms, symbols and dreams amongst the patients, which made

sense from a psychoanalytic perspective. Still, he pursued an integrative and eclectic

stance towards psychotherapy.

Early professional career

After graduating with the Ph.D. Fried sought and got a position as director of the

psychological clinic, and counselor to students, at the Union College, Schenectady,

N.Y. Here he also worked as an associate professor. He did psychotherapy, coun-

seling, and diagnostic testing with over 200 students each year. During the same

years he established a private practice, and went into personal psychoanalysis. In-

terestingly, he was one of 90 therapists selected to participate in the quite famous

study on psychotherapy effectiveness, conducted by Charles Truax at the University

of Arkansas.

Talking about the years at the Union College in the Narsisti interview, Fried men-

tioned the informal and spontaneous social atmosphere amongst the faculty of the

college. He had joint seminars with the professor in English literature, and close con-

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tacts with the professor of music and the conductor of the college orchestra. He

wrote the concert previews, and could even influence the choice of repertoire and

performers in his position as chairman of the college concert series.

Contact to Finland

During the 1950’s, when Fried was studying at Harvard, the U.S.A. waged wars in

the Far East, first in Korea, and from 1955 onwards in Vietnam. Fried was in opposi-

tion to these wars and turned into a conscientious objector to military service. This

led to troubles, even a threat of imprisonment, but eventually he was given the option

of doing civil service at the U.S. Veterans Administrations hospitals. Since many of

his friends fared much worse, Fried felt that he was in a debt of honor. To pay this

debt he volunteered for the American Friends Service Committee to a work camp at

Beaver, Alaska in 1958. Then, two years later, the organization sent him as camp

leader to a similar work camp at Posio, Finland.

This commission would turn out to be fateful. At that camp he met Arja Lauhakari, his

future wife. Already next year they served as co-leaders of a camp at Kuhmo, Fin-

land, and married that summer in 1961. Arja moved to the U.S. to live with Risto

(then still Cristopher) at Schenectady, where their first two sons were born. The con-

tact to Finland was however maintained, and in the academic year 1964 to 1965

Fried spent a sabbatical year in this country, doing field work in two small rural com-

munities - one in Ostrobothnia and one in Savo -, collecting projective test and be-

havioral data from the inhabitants.

After a couple of more years in the U.S. the family started to contemplate the possi-

bility of a permanent move to Finland. Having met the Finnish psychiatrist and psy-

choanalyst Martti Siirala in New York, Fried decided to venture on the prospect. On

Siirala’s suggestion Jyväskylä was chosen as the place of residence. The year was

1968. Fried started to build up a network of contacts where the Department of Pedi-

atrics and Phoniatrics, headed by Ahti Sonninen, the Central-Finland Child Guidance

Center, and the local mental health centers became important nods. He also started

to see patients in private practice at an early stage, aided by his wife Arja to over-

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come the language barrier. It took him, however, only one year to start lecturing and

doing therapy in Finnish.

Fried was also invited to give lectures on psychodiagnostics and psychotherapy at

the Department of Psychology of the University of Jyväskylä. The department had a

strong tradition in personality and developmental psychology, but instruction in clini-

cal psychology was almost nonexistent. In due course the potential contribution of

Fried’s clinical and psychoanalytic expertise was recognized, and he was in 1973

offered the position as Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology, which he held until

his retirement in 1990. At the department he developed the teaching in clinical psy-

chology, psychodiagnostics and psychotherapy together with Antero Toskala, the

foremost pioneer of cognitive psychotherapy in Finland. The close collaboration of

these two scholars, representing different therapeutic orientations, was based on

mutual respect and understanding. Eventually the tradition they initiated has resulted

in the present situation, where the department is by far the most influential center of

training and research in psychotherapy in this country.

The Icarus complex

Henry A. Murray is best known for his theory of personality called Personology,

based on the interplay between ‘need’ and ‘press’, and for developing the Thematic

Apperception Test (TAT), an instrument designed to assess those dynamics, togeth-

er with Christiana Morgan. He is less known as the originator of the concept of the

Icarus complex. But it was this part of Murray’s legacy that Risto Fried would cherish

the most.

According to Murray is the Icarus complex seen in a personality type that contains

attention- and admiration-seeking narcissistic behaviors, expressed in ascensionism,

i.e. the notion that the future is not dictated by the past or present, and no destination

or goal is unreachable; combined with the contrary prospection of falling, i.e. the no-

tion that the future will include a failure, foreboding encountering a crash and burn.

Persons presenting with the complex often feature an emotional drawing towards or

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fascination with fire, possible bedwetting in childhood, and an abundance of water

imagery.

Fried initiated a series of therapeutic case studies on the Icarus complex already in

the early 1960’s, and in 1977 he published a monograph (translated into Finnish) on

one case with the title ‘A paratrooper’s son: treatment for fear of success and fear of

heights in a narcissistic personality disorder’. The patient’s academic failures in-

volved a fear of success, and were paralleled by a phobia of high places. Dreams,

drawings, and fantasies centered about the wish to fly, climb mountains, and jump

from heights, and the fear of falling. It turned out that the patient’s father had been a

paratrooper, and that the son’s motive in parachuting himself had been to make one

more jump than his father. Before reaching this goal, however, he began to have

intolerable nightmares in which his chute did not open. For Fried, both in terms of

clinical and theoretical prominence, it was important to discover, that the patient’s

problems were not expressed in terms of the oedipal stage but in more archaically

infantile, preverbal and pregenital symbolism.

Fried’s goal with his studies on the Icarus complex was to integrate Murray’s ideas

with classical psychoanalytic work on flight fantasies and locomotor phobias, with

later thinking on narcissistic personality disorders, and with the study of related sym-

bolism in both criminals and creative artists. One particularly important outgrowth of

this work was his studies on the psychology of terrorists, especially skyjackers.

One skyjacker - a former paratrooper -, whom he tested with the Rorschach, had

regularly dreamt that when his chute opened, it went skyward rather than earthward.

The Rorschach card, with which he most closely identified with, was one that he had

seen both as a bat and as a blackened, misshapen autumn leaf. This represented

the dual image he had of himself – on one hand as a loner, independent and unpre-

dictable but on the other hand as unworthy and deeply depressed; the side of him

that had actually preceded his terrorist act.

For Fried, skyjackings and terrorist acts presented themselves as attempts to re-

enact infantile trauma related to disintegration of the self and over-compensatory

fusion with idealized parental images. Commanding an aircraft was seen as a sym-

bolic return to the womb of the ‘omnipotent flying mother’. It is then also well to re-

member that in the original myth Icarus was accompanied by his father Daedalus,

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and the objective of the flight was to escape from imprisonment. The reason for the

fall of Icarus was the ambition to fly too high. For Fried the objective of treatment for

the icarian patient was not to make him earthbound; but to help him fly more modest-

ly, with more wisdom and patience, like Daedalus.

So important was Icarus for Fried – to whom he referred to as the neglected twin of

Narcissus – that he already had an outline and a tentative text for an introduction to

a book on the subject. Unfortunately, at the end, were his wings not strong enough to

carry through that flight.

Developing projective techniques

The short presentation above on Fried’s work on the Icarus complex gives a glimpse

of his methodological approach. He relied on idiographic case studies, and used a

variety of techniques, combined with psychoanalytic hermeneutics, to get an under-

standing of how the research subject’s subjective experience was organized. He

usually combined clinical interviews with projective techniques, and often with the

analysis of dreams. It appears that for him there was actually no division between

clinical and research data; and that the use of projective techniques was a natural

continuation and deepening of the clinical interview.

In order to support the Rorschach as a projective technique for exploring the ‘inner

life’ of the subject, Fried used an arrangement he called ‘the Post-Rorschach’ (PR).

This procedure consists of seven questions put to the subject after the regular ad-

ministration of the Rorschach test. For this purpose, the cards are spread out so that

all may be seen simultaneously:

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I

II III IV

V VI VII

VIII IX X

The examiner then asks which card is:

1. Liked best

2. Liked least

3. Most like mother

4. Most like father

5. Most frightening

6. Most like love or sex

7. Most like himself

Each question is accompanied by questions as to the reasons for this choice. Funny

enough, when Fried in the 1970’s wanted to explore who had originated this method,

after making several inquiries he had to come to the conclusion that he had done it

himself – obviously of course under the influence by others.

The advantage that Fried saw in this method was that now the responses given dur-

ing the original administration of the test can be related to the subjects personal and

idiographic perception of the cards; not on the basis of any universal hypothesis

concerning the stimulus value of each card. As can be derived from this, Fried’s ap-

proach to the Rorschach was predominately content based. With the introduction

and present use of Exner’s Comprehensive System as the standard method of ap-

plying the Rorschach, it seems that much of the richness of such a content analysis

has been lost.

Having studied under Murray, Fried had a thorough familiarity with the TAT. He di-

verged, however, from the ‘need’/’press’ -model of analysis in favor, once again, for

a more idiographic and psychoanalytic approach. On the basis of his own clinical

experience he recommended an alternated choice and sequence of cards, designed

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to elicit sentiments related to significant interpersonal and intrapersonal constella-

tions and conflicts in human life.

But even more than the TAT, Fried valued another thematic test, namely the Make-

A-Picture-Story –test (MAPS) developed by the well-known suicidologist Edwin S.

Shneidman in 1947. The test consists of a series of 21 background pictures - a living

room, a street, a bridge, and so on - together with 67 human and animal cutout fig-

ures. The respondent's task is to place one or more of the figures on a background

and then to tell a story about the resulting picture. The foremost aim of the MAPS is

to arrive at an understanding of the individual psychodynamics in any particular pa-

tient.

When Fried started to use the MAPS with Finnish patients he noticed that it did not

work as it had done with the male student population he had mainly worked with in

the U.S. The Finnish middle-aged women who were now his most frequent patients

had difficulties to find in Shneidman’s original material figures with which they could

identify themselves and significant others. Fried’s solution to this was to include one

more background picture - a sauna (sic!) - and draw his own cutout figures that rep-

resented typical Finnish characters, like a more corpulent mother, a male drunkard,

nude human figures, and the Finnish ‘joulupukki’ (Santa Claus).

Together with a group of master students Fried also developed a new thematic test

to be used in the vocational guidance services. The idea here was to put less stress

on inner conflicts and more on the apperception of different interpersonal constella-

tions typical for career planning and choice, and within the working life. A whole se-

ries of new pictures were drawn for this test.

Culture and national character

As mentioned above, Fried, when still at the Union College, spent one sabbatical

year (1964-1965) doing fieldwork in remote villages in Ostrobothnia and Savo to-

gether with his wife. The intention of this project was to investigate family interrela-

tionships and the correspondences between a person’s outer and inner life. For

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Fried contrasts between the two villages, and between these people and the Ameri-

cans with whom he had been working, were often striking. They seemed to corrobo-

rate at least some of the popular stereotypes about people of these regions and cul-

tures.

The TAT, the Rorschach and the Machover Draw-A-Person (DAP) test were used as

instruments. The administration of the Rorschach included the PR. Among the many

observations Fried made from the data, was the striking differences between images

of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ amongst the rural Finns and the American populations he

was acquainted with. Among the Finnish subjects ‘mother’ was typically identified in

terms of work: lifting, carrying, cooking, washing, helping a child to get dressed.

Such characteristics were hardly present in the reasons American’s gave for their

choice of a mother-card. Again, with the choice and reasons for the choice of father-

cards, Finns, in contrasts to Americans, seemed to think of ‘father’, not in terms of

how he looked but in terms of what he did. He was a hunter, and any animal skin,

game bird, or dog suggested by an inkblot was a convenient take-off point for this

association. Still, this image of the ‘hunter-father’ appeared to be highly idealized,

and did not correspond to the self-images of Finnish men. In the DAP the Finnish

man might draw shy-looking, awkward human figures, the man smaller than the

woman, while his wife drew bold figures with energetic strokes of the pencil.

The observations from that study lead Fried to take an extended look at mother and

father images as related to the Rorschach by Americans and Finns. He noted that

many psychologists in clinical practice work on the assumption that a subject’s re-

sponses to Cards IV and VII of the Rorschach test refer, respectively, to his or her

relations with father and mother. There had, by 1973 when this study was reported,

indeed been a distinct tendency for results of empirical research to confirm the basic

hypothesis that the Rorschach cards have distinct stimulus characteristics and that

some, IV and VII in particular, are associated with father- and mother-child relation-

ships. Fried’s individual testing of 205 American and 820 Finnish subjects further

confirmed this hypothesis for the U.S.A., but indicated that card III (were the figures

can be seen as actively pursuing domestic tasks) was an even more frequently cho-

sen mother-card for Finns than is card VII. For Finns there appeared to be no father-

card.

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These findings – showing that American and Finnish subjects differ significantly in

their choices of a mother-card and that Finns find it difficult to even perceive com-

plete human figures on card VII (the most usual choice of Americans as mother-

card) – lead Fried to postulate interaction between stimulus aspects of card VII and

culture-bond variables that differ in Finland and the U.S. To investigate in this ques-

tion he, together with a group of master students, performed a series of experiments

with four modifications of the card VII. In one modification the ‘waist’ area of the hu-

man like figure was added so that the figure looked a little plumper. In accordance

with expectations this alteration actually made the card more acceptable for Finns to

be chosen as depicting ‘mother’, indicating that the cultural image of ‘mother’ differs

between different national groups.

Another interesting finding regarding cultural determinants of the apperception of

projective test material, especially the Rorschach, concerns cultural-specific shared

images. Fried found that in the Finnish population such an image is the percept of

Christmas elves on the Rorschach card II. This is a well-integrated human move-

ment whole response which takes into account both chromatic and achromatic color,

and reaches popular status in Finnish samples. According to common interpretation,

such a well-integrated response to Card II betokens a high level of personality inte-

gration and of ability to cope with the threatening aspects of the card.

According to Fried achieving a whole human movement response on card II was

found to be significantly less frequent in the U.S. than in Finland and the Christmas

elf response was not encountered at all. He also concluded that a general tendency

on the part of Finns to give whole responses with human content could not be ad-

duced as an explanation, because it did not obtain on other cards. His reasons were

cultural. He contended that among the rural Finns who were his subjects, first, holi-

days had a heightened significance for people accustomed to a hard life in a monot-

onous environment. Second, Christmas specifically was connected for Finns with an

intensified sense of family togetherness and closeness to people otherwise physical-

ly or emotionally distant. Third, the traditional clothing of Christmas elves is red and

gray, precisely as in the Rorschach figure. Fourth, virtually all Finns identified with

elves by putting on such clothes and dancing in the elf game at Christmas (remem-

ber that the data was collected in the 1960’s). The elf response was not mere fanta-

sy, but had a firm basis in reality. Thus, Fried concluded that this response really did

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relate to capacity for resistance to stress, rooted in early experiences of gratification

and security in an interpersonal setting.

The Rorschach and primitive mental phenomena

Fried significantly contributed to the understanding of mental phenomena nowadays

seen as characteristic of the so called borderline personality organization. It was dur-

ing the 1970’s that the character pathology coined as ‘borderline’ was started to be

understood as not lying ‘in between’ neurotic and psychotic personality organization

but to represent a stable organization of its own, representing a distinct kind of men-

tal progression.

Two seminal volumes gathered the evidence from the Rorschach research in favor

of this conclusion, namely Borderline Phenomena and the Rorschach Test, edited by

Jay Kwawer, Howard Lerner, Paul Lerner, and Alan Sugarman in 1980, and Primitive

Mental States and the Rorschach edited by Howard Lerner and Paul Lerner in 1988.

In the first volume Fried wrote a chapter on the Rorschach and Icarus, and in the

second, together with Eero Rantasila, Matti Reinikainen, Elina Malkavaara-Kallinen

and Marja-Helena Huttunen, a chapter entitled The Paradox of Pregenitality: Longing

for Contact, Fear of Intimacy. In the chapter the writers present a sampling of the

variety of ways in which people with a specific developmental background known as

the lsakower phenomenon try to cope with their problematic life situations, and with

the anxiety-rousing, bewildering nature of this particular kind of cognitive disorgani-

zation. Seeking security and love despite early experiences with maternal breasts

that threatened life, either by giving nothing or by giving something noxious, each of

the persons longed for contact, for the reassuring touch that signifies that one is not

alone, not insensate and dead, but close to someone else.

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Research on sleeping and dreaming

As stated above, Fried became interested in the dreams of psychiatric patients dur-

ing his internship at Brattleboro Retreat in the 1950’s. This inspired him to turn to

psychoanalysis as the main theoretical framework for his clinical work. It is unclear at

what time during his professorship at the University of Jyväskylä he got the idea to

establish a sleep and dream laboratory at the Department of Psychology. Already in

a lecture for the Finnish Psychiatric Association in 1980 he describes how “in the

case of a child who suffered from night terrors of which he could not remember the

content, a group at the University of Jyväskylä were able to obtain more information

in a week than a skilled and experienced therapist, relying on traditional methods like

clinical interview and play therapy, had been able to obtain in over a year.” Anyway,

the actual activities of the dream laboratory started at the beginning of the 1980’s.

The aim of the sleep and dream laboratory was to integrate physiological and psy-

chological approaches to sleeping and dreaming. On the physiological side co-

workers of Fried’s were first Heikki Lyytinen, and later Jukka Kaartinen who would

come to be the investigator in charge of the electrophysiological recordings and

analysis of sleep stages.

Three main research projects have been reported. In the first one nine patients in

psychotherapy who were reluctant to reveal the content of their inner worlds spent 6

nights in the dream laboratory to assist them in achieving a better awareness of in-

ner events. The subjects reported dreams for about half of their awakenings during

REM sleep. Dreams were discussed in consultation sessions between each sub-

ject’s therapist and the research team. Subjects rated by their therapists as less de-

fensive reported more, longer, and better structured dreams. Their reluctance to tell

dreams in therapy was based on anxiety concerning their revealing content, whereas

the other subjects actually had little to tell because their fragmentary dreams lacked

substance. According to the research team, these findings indicated that the labora-

tory experience helped superior dreamers overcome their resistance to discussing

dreams with their therapists, but less capable dreamers in some cases became still

more defensive. It was also observed that discussions of dreams in therapy shifted

emphasis from the past to current problems.

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To determine the sleep stages, and accordingly identify likely moments of dreaming,

the electro-oculogram (EOG) that registered rapid eye movements (REM) was used.

This is, however, a method which subjects usually find disturbing, as it requires elec-

trodes to be applied to the subjects’ eyelids. In the second series of experiments the

usefulness of the static charge sensitive bed (SCSB) as the method for identifying

sleep states was studied. On the basis of the sleeper’s respiration, cardiac activity,

and small body movements these states were identified as active, intermediate or

quiet states of sleep. Simultaneous EOG recordings showed that rapid eye move-

ments occur significantly most often during active sleep, less so during intermediate

sleep and very seldom during quiet sleep states.

To determine the relationship between dreaming and sleep states as indicated by

the SCSB -method, six non-patient male and female Finnish adults were awakened

several times per night during a total of 36 experimental nights to report dreams oc-

curring at the different states. The results indicated that awakenings during active

sleep were followed by a report of dreaming (defined as two or more visual images

of objects and/or events with temporal continuity), while dream reports were less fre-

quent after intermediate or quiet sleep. Reports of no recall of any sleep mentation

were given mostly after quiet or intermediate sleep. Other kind of reports, including

single visual images and thinking, were inconsistently distributed across the three

states. Thus it was asserted that dreaming phases were reliably distinguishable

through the sole use of the SCSB.

Finally the dreams reported were analyzed using three methods – a scaling of mani-

fest content, Montague Ullman’s experiential dream group, and psychoanalytic free

association. The research group contended that of these the content analysis was

the least valuable. The greatest value of the experiential dream group laid in the at-

tention given by the group members to affective content. Other group members

proved successful in ascertaining feelings from the setting and activities within the

dream. This resulted in making the dreamer feel understood. Agreement on interpre-

tation of dream imagery was lower, showing that dream symbols often have a very

personal, unique significance.

Free association led, in every instance, to noteworthy increments in information

about dreams already discussed in the group. The relation of dreams both to current

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life situation and to inner conflicts became clearer. It was also noted that even the

briefest quiet state phenomena, isolated images or imageless thought fragments,

yielded significant personal information and formed an integral part of the cognitive-

emotional problem solving process that constituted a night’s dream sequence.

A third research project extended the use of the dream laboratory to include whole

families as subjects. Three families with four or five members each spent nights in

the dream laboratory. Dream analysis and dream group work were combined with

data from family and individual interviews, self-reports and family drawings, the

MAPS, and the Rorschach administered as a family and consensus task (one re-

search project using the Couple Rorschach with couples including an alcoholic

member had been instigated already a few years earlier). This resulted in detailed

and multifaceted case descriptions of the interrelatedness between family and indi-

vidual dynamics. Unfortunately no combined or generalized report on these case

studies has been published.

One of Fried’s conclusions from the dream research was that the difference between

the clinical and nonclinical dreams lies not in their structure but in the degree of ade-

quacy with which they fulfill their function. He also started to value Ullman’s experi-

ential dream groups as a method for analyzing dreams and increasing the self-

awareness of people within a safe, democratic and non-judgmental context. He used

it frequently in training programs for psychologists and psychotherapists.

On psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and training of psychotherapists

In a paper at the 1990 Nordic Conference in Psychology in Turku Fried described his

early contact with psychotherapy: “When I began my training in the United Sates in

the early fifties, there were essentially two approaches available. One was the psy-

choanalytic, the other non-directive or client-centered. Both had in common an es-

sentially passive attitude on the part of the therapist, who gave the patient ample

freedom and opportunity of self expression and gradual without direction or interfer-

ence. Good! – But unless the therapist was highly skilled, these approaches some-

times deteriorated into endless processes in which both therapist and patient forgot

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what had been the reason for starting therapy and what were the goals whose at-

tainment would justify terminating the therapy”.

Fried then refers to Eysenck’s critique of psychotherapy, and how this led many

therapists to develop new techniques, with the aim to achieve rapidly clearly defined

and noticeable change. He then continues: “Personally I was one of those who felt

no reason to abandon my basic approach, which is psychoanalytic, leavened by

Rogerian empathy. But I was fascinated by the new perspectives offered by learning,

cognitive and systems theory, and while rejecting eclecticism, have tried to integrate

these with the insights of psychoanalysis.” He goes on to deny that this would have

meant that he had been won over to brief therapy: “Where my therapies have indeed

been brief, I have often been less than happy with the achievement, because too

keenly aware of how much more might have been achieved”. Using projective testing

and laboratory assisted dram analysis were for Fried opportunities of increasing the

effectiveness of less lengthy therapies without bypassing important and painful con-

flicts in the patient’s inner life.

In a similar vein as in the Turku paper Fried approaches the question of effective and

sufficient treatment in his 1980 paper at the Finnish Psychiatric Association. The pa-

per was entitled “Therapy for the people: The gold of psychoanalysis for the benefit

of all”. Defining his own standpoint on the question of how to make psychotherapy

available to larger shares of the population, he wrote: “It is psychoanalysis that con-

tinues to offer the most comprehensive theory of personality and the most thorough

therapeutic training beyond the foundation given by an education in medicine, psy-

chology, or social work. But psychoanalysis is no longer so unique, nor so clearly

superior to its competitors, as to be able to stand aloof while insisting on its pristine

purity. For the socially responsible therapist, therefore, the question no longer is one

of knowing no serviceable metal with which the gold of psychoanalysis might be al-

loyed, but of learning to recognize and utilize the best of what the new therapies

have to offer.”

And what then was “the gold of psychoanalysis”? For Fried it was a thorough under-

standing of the concepts of transference and resistance, which emphasize the im-

portance of the unconscious and inner conflict. Based on this idea of ‘alloying the

gold of psychoanalysis with the metals of other psychotherapies’, Fried developed

17

new training models. The first one was a training program for the Central Finland

Child Guidance Center, starting in 1972. The rational of the program was to teach

mental health workers to do the kind of work most likely to be required of them in the

public health sector. The new elements, compared to other family and child guidance

training programs at that time, was introducing supervision involving tape recordings

of the trainee’s sessions with patients and providing personal therapy – individually

or in groups – for the trainees, as paid for by the program.

A second, much more thorough, opportunity to execute the idea of ‘alloying the gold

of psychoanalysis’, in the training of psychotherapists, was given Fried in 1986. That

year he initiated a three year program in psychoanalytic psychotherapy which in-

cluded elements from other therapeutic orientations. To the best of my knowledge

this was the first genuinely university-based training program for psychotherapists in

Finland. In the interview for the magazine Narsisti Fried comments on the resistance

this program evoked within the established Finnish psychoanalytic community. It was

seen to ‘water down’ the psychoanalytic training by violating accepted standards

concerning hours of theoretical classes and personal psychotherapy. Still, Fried had

his way, and the program was implemented in Central Finland and in Lapland, with

the precise goal to make psychotherapeutic services more accessible to the public in

these regions. Many of the teaching methods in the program were unique within psy-

choanalytic training at that time in this country, e.g. the use of films and simulated

therapy sessions.

Tackling Freud

There are quite a few other areas of study than the ones mentioned above in which

Fried was active. Due to restrictions of time I will only mention some of them. He had

a keen interest in psychosomatic disorders such as encopresis, asthma and anorex-

ia, defending the importance of looking at the specific individual pathology and the

family dynamics behind the symptom formation. He published together with co-

writers on the relationship between language environment and gender identity at-

tainment, and on the child rearing practices of the working class. He was passionate-

18

ly interested in the creative process, and studied the psychodynamic processes of

artists, writers, film-directors and composers, as they manifested themselves in crea-

tions of art, life processes, and when possible in dreams and projective material.

However, the main object of Fried’s scholarly interest during his last years would be

psychoanalysis in itself, and the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. This re-

search which actually spanned over 20 years culminated in his opus magnum Freud

on the Acropolis – a Detective Story. Since this work will be the topic of the next

presentation I will not go into it. Suffice it to say that in my reading the work is not

really about what happened to Freud at the Acropolis but about the relationship of

Fried - who sometimes designated himself as a ‘lonely wolf’ within the psychoanalyt-

ic community - to Freud and the whole psychoanalytic movement.

For me it is somehow telling that this work, dwelling over 600 pages on a 10 pages

long treatise by Freud, was written by a man, i.e. Fried, who as an eight real old boy

had to leave his father behind in the unsecure circumstances of war, and when final-

ly reunited with the father had to face the disappointment of the parents’ divorce. Af-

ter all, Freud, in the concluding remarks of his A Disturbance of Memory on the

Acropolis, states: “Thus what interfered with our enjoyment of the journey to Athens

was a feeling of filial piety. And now you will no longer wonder that the recollection of

this incident on the Acropolis should have troubled me so often since I myself have

grown old and stand in need of forbearance and can travel no more.” Neither Freud,

nor Fried, was allowed to fly in the mythical landscapes of ancient mankind accom-

panied by the trusty wings of a wise and loving Daedalus.

Let me, before I finish, give a last word to Risto Fried. In December 1999 Fried wrote

a customer’s review of an Audio CD with the title Music for Vihuela. On the CD a

musician by name Christopher Wilson plays music from the 16th century by compos-

ers Luis de Milán and Luys de Narváez. First Fried gives this information: “The vi-

huela is an instrument tuned like a lute but shaped like a guitar. It was highly popular

in Spain for a period of more than a century, and existed in three forms: to be

plucked with a plectrum, stroked with a bow, or played with the fingers (vihuela de

meno). Its sound is more lute- than guitar-like.”

Then the text continues: “Wilson’s playing is masterful and well suited to the lyrical,

intimate character of the music. Milán, a nobleman who played for pleasure, not

19

money, is represented by eight Fantasias, a more extended Fantasia known as a

Tiento, and a celebrated Pavane. Narváez, a professional musician, contributes five

Fantasias plus sacred and secular pieces based on vocal models. One of these, a

Romance, was my whole reason for acquiring this recording.”

Why? “This Romance is titled “Paseavase ei rey Moro” (“The Moorish king was rid-

ing”) on this record. It is also called “Ay de mi Alhama!” (“Oh, for my Alhama”) and

“La conquista de Alhama” or “La perdida de Alhama”; “conquest”’ or “loss”, depend-

ing on whether the singer is a Spaniard or a Moor. This song must have been com-

posed soon after the Moorish defeat and Spanish takeover in 1482. The anonymous

composer was probably Moorish, and Narváez merely arranged the piece for voice

with vihuela accompaniment, the form in which it was printed in 1538.”

Then Fried tells that the song describes how the Moorish king, initially refusing to

believe what had happened, killed the messenger who brought him the nes of the

defeat at Alhama. Eventually the Moors, in 1492, surrendered to King Ferdinand and

Queen Isabella, who expelled both the Moors and the Jews from Spain and centu-

ries of religious tolerance and cultural exchange, had come to an end.

Finally we come to the crux of the matter: “As early as 1936, however, Sigmund

Freud quoted a stanza from the Romance in his essay A Disturbance of Memory on

the Acropolis. Surely any person who has read even just one of these texts must be

curious about what the music sounded like.” And then, in what I consider to be a very

‘Friedian’ style, the customer’s review continues: “Though Wilson has given us a

highly refined answer, I would welcome an additional performance that provides all

the elements of the Spanish-Moorish-Sephardic Romance: two or more singers, from

different ethnic backgrounds, using words from their own languages, and an array of

instruments of both African and European provenance.”

Fried concludes his customer’s review: “But why did Freud make excursions into

Spanish history and Moorish music in an essay whose title leads readers to expect

something dealing with the archaeology of ancient Greece? I have written about

these questions in an as yet unpublished book titled Freud on the Acropolis, but this

is a record review, not a book preview, so I think I had better stop here.”

And I think I had better stop here, too. Thank you for your kind attention!

20

Bibliography

Publications:

Fried, Christopher and Lauhakari Fried, Arja (1965) Two families: A psychological study of interpersonal processes as expressed in behavior and in fantasy. In Stimulus character in the Rorschach inkblots: twelve essays, 1965-1987. University of Jyväskylä: Reports from the Department of Psychology, 274.

Fried, Arja and Fried, Christopher (1968) Music, food and love. Stereo Review, November, 70-75.

Fried, Christopher (1968) Finnish and American apperceptions of “Father” and “Mother” cards on the Rorschach Test. In Stimulus character in the Rorschach inkblots: twelve es-says, 1965-1987. University of Jyväskylä: Reports from the Department of Psychology, 274.

Fried, Christopher (1972) Näkymätön elokuva. Psykoterapeuttinen aikakauskirja 2, 36-92. Helsinki: Therapeia-säätiö.

Fried, Risto (1973) Mother and father images as related to the Rorschach by 1025 Ameri-cans and Finns. In Stimulus character in the Rorschach inkblots: twelve essays, 1965-1987. University of Jyväskylä: Reports from the Department of Psychology, 274.

Fried, Risto (1977) Suloiset rinnat. Psykoterapeuttinen aikakauskirja 3, 18-42. Helsinki: Therapeia-säätiö.

Fried, Risto (1977) Christmas elves on the Rorschach: A popular Finnish response and its cultural significance. In Stimulus character in the Rorschach inkblots: twelve essays, 1965-1987. University of Jyväskylä: Reports from the Department of Psychology, 274.

Fried, Risto (1977) The Post-Rorschach (PR): Origins and development. In Stimulus charac-ter in the Rorschach inkblots: twelve essays, 1965-1987. University of Jyväskylä: Reports from the Department of Psychology, 274.

Fried, Risto (1977) Laskuvarjojääkärin poika: menestymisen ja korkeiden paikkojen pelon hoito narsistisessa persoonallisuuden häiriössä. University of Jyväskylä: Reports from the Department of Psychology, 190.

Fried, Risto (1980) Rorschach and Icarus. In Jay Kwawer, Howard Lerner, Paul Lerner, and Alan Sugarman (eds.) Borderline phenomena and the Rorschach test. New York: Interna-tional Universities Press.

Fried, Risto (1981) Psychotherapy and memories of birth. University of Jyväskylä: Reports from the Department of Psychology, 243.

Guiora, Alexander Z.; Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin; Fried, Risto and Yoder, Cecelia (1982) Lan-guage environment and gender identity attainment. Language Learning, 32 (2), 289-304.

Fried, Risto (1982) The psychology of the terrorist. In Brian M. Jenkins (ed.) Terrorism and beyond: An international conference on terrorism and low-level conflict (119-124). Santa Monica, Ca.: Rand.

Fried, Risto; Impiö, Pekka and Laitila, Aarno (1984) Lapsen tuhriminen perheen salatun vä-kivalta- ja aggressioongelman ilmauksena. Psykologia, 19 (6), 434-440.

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Fried, Risto; Rantasila, Eero; Reinikainen, Matti; Malkavaara-Kallinen, Elina and Huttunen, Marja-Helena (1988) The paradox of pregenitality: Longing for contact, fear of intimacy. In Howard Lerner and Paul Lerner (eds.) Primitive mental states and the Rorschach (3-51). New York: International Universities Press.

Fried, Risto (1984) Movies and their messages: Spielberg’s “Jaws” and Tarkovsky’s “Mirror.” In Lea Pulkkinen and Paula Lyytinen (eds.) Human action and personality. Essays in honor of Martti Takala (120-129). Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Re-search, 54.

Fried, Risto (1985) Freuds dream theory: Outdated or underrated? Psychiatria Fennica, Vol. Supplement, 117-127.

Fried, Risto; Lyytinen, Heikki; Hanikka, Esa; Peltola, Mari; Puhakka, Päivi and Rantasila, Eero (1985) Unilaboratorio—mahdollisuus ongelmallisten psykoterapioiden tukemiseen. Psykologia, 20 (2), 83-86.

Kaartinen, Jukka; Fried, Risto; Lyytinen, Heikki; Leppänen, Arto; Lähderinne, Seija and Ran-tasuo, Jaana (1987) ”Autonomiset univaiheet” ja unennäkeminen. Psykologia, 22 (6), 405-407.

Suokas, Anne and Fried, Risto (1987) Työväenaate ja lasten kasvatus. Helsinki: Parasta lapsille.

Fried, Risto; Kaartinen, Jukka; Leppänen, Arto; Lähderinne, Seija and Rantasuo, Jaana (1988) Kolme lähestymistapaa unien tulkintaan. Psykologia, 23 (2), 990-95.

Fried, Risto and Vandereycken, Walter (1989) The Peter Pan syndrome: Was James M. Barrie anorexic? International Journal of Eating Disorders, 8 (3), 369-376.

Fried, Risto (1990) Stimulus character in the Rorschach inkblots: twelve essays, 1965-1987. University of Jyväskylä: Reports from the Department of Psychology, 274.

Fried, Risto (1990) Sigmund Freud walks in his sleep. Psykologia, 25 (1), 4-18.

Mattlar, Carl-Erik and Fried, Risto (1993) The Rorschach in Finland. Rorschachiana XVIII, 7-26.

Fried, Risto (1997) Personal and classical myth: A confrontation on the Acropolis. Interna-tional Forum of Psychoanalysis 6 (1), 7-15.

Fried, Risto (1999) Customer’s review of Music for Vihuela, Christopher Wilson, Naxos 8.553523 DDD. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Fantasias-Musica-De-Vihuela-Milan/product-reviews/B00000DLXI

Fried, Risto (2004) Freud on the Acropolis – a detective story. Helsinki: Therapeia Founda-tion.

Unpublished sources:

Fried, Christopher and Lauhakari Fried, Arja (1966) In search of national character. Un-published manuscript.

Fried, Christopher (1968) Curriculum Vitae.

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Fried, Risto (1980) Therapy for the people: The gold of psychoanalysis for the benefit of all. Paper presented at the Finnish Psychiatric Association, Helsinki 13.-15.3.1980.

Fried, Risto (1990) Cognitive restructuring, semantic power and effevtiveness in psychother-apy. Paper presented at the 1990 Nordic Conference in Psychology,Turku.

Tanskanen, Leena and Tunkkari, Eila (1990?) Interview with Risto Fried for Narsisti.