Our colleague and friend Bo Larsson has sadly passed away after a short illness on 5 April, just 2 months before his 79th birthday. Ever since 2004, he and his wife, Lis Lind, a retired psychoanalyst also, had been living in Helsingör, Denmark.
Freud wrote in his ‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’ that it looked as if ‘analysis were the third of those “impossible” professions in which one can be sure beforehand of achieving unsatisfying results. The other two, which have been known much longer, are education and government.’ He had been thinking about the exacting demands of practising psychoanalysis on the personality and the complex nature of – and resistance to – an activity that strives after the truth about ourselves and the manifestation of those illusions which none of us willingly like to relinquish.
After a long working life, Bo Larsson however could state that psychoanalysis was a most rewarding profession. He regarded psychoanalysis as a science in its own right which formed the basis for an undoubtedly effective method of psychological treatment. Bo was a gifted clinician who managed to personify the interconnection between theory and practice. He communicated openly how he thought and worked in ‘An Analyst at Work in Sweden’, published in ‘Analysts at Work: Practice, Principles and Techniques (The Master Work)’, ed. Joseph Reppen, Jason Aronson, 1977.
Bo Larsson was active as a psychoanalyst, teacher and supervisor for almost 30 years without ever doubting the value and significance of psychoanalysis for the individual and society alike. Always open for theoretical and clinical advances in psychoanalysis, he was however quite wary about any tendency to get rid of the cornerstones in Freud’s ideas and to revert to an unscientific and pre-psychoanalytic way of thinking. As he was fond of saying salt should retain its saltiness.
Bo was active in the discussions about the philosophical status of psychoanalysis, after being influenced earlier by Thomas Szasz and by the metascience of psychoanalysis developed by Carl Lesche during the 1970s and 1980s, who in turn had been inspired amongst others by Apel and Habermas. He was a regular participant in seminars at the Nordic Summer University on hermeneutics and phenomenology and became the Nordic co-ordinator for the study group on ‘Normality and Deviation’ in the 1970s. During this same period, he became a seriously committed member of an open discussion group, composed of psychoanalysts and philosophers interested in hermeneutics. They met every other Saturday at Västerlånggatan 60 under the guidance of Carl Lesche to read Sartre, Heidegger and especially the phenomenology of Husserl as a philosophical foundation for psychoanalysis. At the IPA Congress in Madrid in 1982, he took part in the discussions about phenomenology. He led a dialogue with Dag Prawitz, one of the participants of the Saturday group, on the topic of ‘The truth of psychoanalysis – is it a natural or human science?’ (‘Psykoanalysens sanning – natur-eller humanvetenskaplig?’) during the conference on ‘Psychoanalysis in Culture’ held in Stockholm in 1989. The dialogue appeared in the book published by Natur och Kultur in 1991. These were controversial issues in our association and there were those who considered Bo Larsson’s distinctive and forthright position as authoritarian. But in his own opinion, an honest and lively exchange of ideas was something worth aspiring to.
Bo Larsson regarded psychoanalysis as a commitment and methodical activity, and nothing abstractly theoretical at all. Many of his colleagues, pupils and analysands can bear witness to the way he was an attentive and patient listener, and one who wanted to facilitate communication and understanding, whilst at the same time encouraged autonomous thinking. Being conscious of the unrelenting force of our unconscious wishes, he was not hesitant to offer helpful clarifications. We remember him most of all as someone who loved psychoanalysis and life. Books were a ready source of pleasure, whose authors Bo enjoyed reading in their original language, be it English, German or French. However, this did not prevent him from taking an avid interest in computers and was probably one of the first psychoanalysts to appreciate their fascinating potential and to buy the original Macintosh PC. He was also a proficient violinist and as he preferred playing with others this chimed well with his finely tuned ability as a speaking partner. During his student days in Stockholm, he started a string orchestra with his fellow medical students, called ‘I medici’ and was their enthusiastic conductor. In the early 1990’s, he formed a string quartet with former medical colleagues which he continued playing in until moving to Denmark.
Bo was an energetic person who left his mark in many psychoanalytic contexts, both in Sweden and abroad. In line with the emancipatory element of psychoanalysis and the importance of critical and autonomous thinking, a candidate society was formed due to Bo’s initiative, which was the first of its kind in the world. Within the Swedish Psychoanalytic Association, he held several important posts, for example as chairman and also of its training institute. He was also instrumental in securing an agreement with Stockholm County Council which made it possible for people to go in psychoanalysis with candidates at a reduced fee. Also he worked hard to enable psychoanalysts with a degree in psychology acquire the same rights to have analysands via the national health insurance as doctors had from 1975, but which unfortunately met unsurmountable opposition from the Swedish Psychological Society. He founded the Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review in 1978 and served as its pioneering editor. He was a reviewer for Psychoanalytical Quarterly and took the initiative for a translation, which he also helped edit, of Freud’s famous case-study of the ‘Ratman’.
There is more to say.
Bo Larsson was a person with warmth, passion, wide experience and clear-sighted thinking who meant a lot to many people and who now leaves a void that cannot be filled.
Catharina Engström
Nikolai Kolev
on behalf of many colleagues who he analysed and trained