6. Personal news..

In the first place I excuse myself another time for not always answering email from friends. This has much to do with the relatively restricted time I have each day to work with. The main reason for this is the fact that due I that I was born the 27th of December in 1919, I will become according to my wife 89 and according to the social security 90 years. My usual standard reply when one asks me “How are you feeling when you are so old” is “Well one has to pay a price to become old” . The reason for this rather banal answer is the fact that I don’t believe that anybody really would like a description of all the more or less disagreeable details, which are the results of getting older. The most discrete way to express them might be by way of describing the amount of medicine one needs to survive. However happily enough and some consolation for me is anyhow that I still feel inspiration and very positive feelings when I see a charming young lady. Although at the same moment I have to acknowledge that it somewhat painfully reminds me of the expression “Si la jeunesse sache and la vieillesse puisse” (If youth would known and the older might be able to). But anyhow most important for me is that each morning I feel enthusiastic to start working again with the Szondiforum.

Since we came back from Thailand. nearly 7 months have past . Life in Lund during the summer was very quiet, as nearly ten thousands of students went on a holiday. We live in the North East of Lund not far away from the great technical development center IDEON, where Sony Ericson is located. (If you are interested to know more about the University town of Lund , you can take: http://wiki.worldflicks.org/lund.html. If you click on “Sony Erikson” you find on the right downside the street “Uardavägen”, 2 minutes from where we live).

Our house lays in a very nice surrounding, together with about 11 houses, around a tree. The whole architectonic set up shapes a kind of familiarity between the neighbors. As most of the families have very young children who play in the garden it is a very lively and nice place to live.

At home I can keep in contact with the whole World, thanks to 25 TV channels and extra Satellite receiver with nearly 2000 TV channels. However most of the International news I get by way of the Internet on my computer: I can read then the headlines of: The Spanish: “El Mundo, the French “ Le Monde”. The German “der Spiegel” and the Dutch “Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant”, all liberal news papers.

Unfortunately I have here still less personal friends than in Falkenberg , the town we left last year. However this lack of a network of friends is more than well compensated by my contact with Dr. Arthur C. Johnston, who last summer visited me. We have a fast daily contact with each other. I feel that, although we are of very different temperament, I found in him a kind of intellectual twin brother. His erudition in many fields is such that I am very grateful to know him. Due to him I feel that I still have the capacity to intellectually develop further.

Therefore I was very happy to hear that his lecture and the practice session he held were a huge success. He was a guest lecturer as Master Graphoanalyst at the IGAS (International Graphoanalyst Society)’s Congress 2008, in the middle of October, He wrote me that he there also presented “a copy of Bo Johnson's diagram, and showed Figure 4 on contraction and release, with comments on how this chart corresponded with the handwriting terms Arthur used. Many wanted a copy of the developing man article, which he will send out to the participants by e-mail”. Especially nice for us all was to hear Arthur´s report that:

• All told, there are parallels between the Szondi ideas on contraction and release and the contraction and release ideas that I presented at the 2008 IGAS Congress. And everyone got my card and list of books on the Szondi Forum and the Pathoanalysis web site.

In this way Arthur does a lot of good work to spread the Szondi theory in broader circles. Another example of his contribution to Szondi publicity is that when he makes graphoanalyses at the Baltimore Book Fair, he informs the professionals he meets about Szondi´s theory.

I will write more news next month. Before finishing this text I would like to send my very wishes to my friends in the Brazilian group. From them I got a very nice group’s picture which gave me much inspiration seeing the many beautiful ladies. A todas del grupo en Brazil nvois os especialmente UN EXTRA GRAN EMBRAZO.

Kind regards to you all from Leo Berlips. Editor: www.szondi.org