Psychiatrist, child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Gunvor Vuoristo (nee Hjelt) passed away at the age of 102 in Helsinki on the 28th of October 2018. She was born on the 19th of April in 1916. After the death of her father, who worked as a provincial medical officer in Lapland, in 1921, she moved to Grankulla to live with her grandmother Emma Lagus. There she completed her secondary education in Grankulla Samskola graduating in 1934. In 1936, she was accepted into the university of Helsinki to study medicine.
When Gunvor Vuoristo had completed her Bachelor of Medicine, she was able to fill in for general practitioners. Sometimes she even had to treat patients at war zone. In 1943 Gunvor married with an economist and the director of Finland’s Association for Communal Work. Unfortunately, after celebrating as a family the christening of their daughter in 1944, her husband died on the front near Viipuri, at the very end of the war.
After graduating in 1947 Gunvor Vuoristo left to study psychoanalytical child psychotherapy in the Erica-foundation in Stockholm. Gunvor returned to Finland in 1949 and went on to specialize in nerve and mental illness as well as child psychiatry. She finished her specialization in 1952. Then together with Veikko Tähkä and Martti Paloheimo Gunvor established the Association for Promoting Psychoanalysis.
From 1955 to 1961 Gunvor Vuoristo participated in IPA’s psychoanalytical training in Stockholm. In 1963, along with eight male colleagues, she founded the Finnish Psychoanalytical Society.
Gunvor Vuoristo taught and consulted mainly in Lastenlinna, the child mental and neurological hospital of Helsinki, but she was also active in hospitals across Finland. Gunvor was extraordinary in having the patience and interest to teach generations of health careers in the psychiatric field. From 1960s on she held her private practice where she treated child and adult patients. In Lastenlinna she taught child psychotherapy, and in the courses organized by the Finnish Psychiatric Society she trained adult psychiatrists to become psychotherapists. Beside this work, which she conducted two decades, she consulted and supervised in child psychiatric wards across the country. Gunvor retired at the age of 80. She was an honorary member of the Finnish Psychiatric Association as well as the Finnish Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Nature was always very close to Gunvor’s heart. In her youth she was a scout and advanced to a leader of a local group. Later on in her life she enjoyed boating near the Åland Islands and even had a proficiency to do so since she was a trained coastal skipper. She was also fond of boating in the Gulf of Finland as well as in lake Saimaa. In the 1970s Gunvor bought a Buster boat after having a summerhouse in the archipelago of Espoo. Labrador retrievers Camillo, and later Etta, accompanied her everywhere.
As her grandchildren said: ‘Other grandmas sit in a rocking chair but our grandma steers a speedboat’. She enjoyed and cherished all the time she got to spend with them. She will be remembered and live on in the memories of them as well as of her students and dear friends.
Kaisa Puhakka, Pupil, colleague, friend.