You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
C.S.: Jan, you are retiring after a long career as psychoanalyst. I'll miss you! We have been working together since 1976—more than 25 years. We shared a practice first at Bastugatan, then at Katarina Bangata, and for the past twenty years we have been working at Barnängsgatan in Stockholm. When did you start to work as an analyst? Do you remember why you became an analyst? And how many patients have you treated during your career?
J.S.: Yes, we have indeed been working together for a long time! I began seeing my first psychoanalytic patient in 1964. Before that, I trained as a child and youth therapist at Ericastiftelsen, from where I graduated in 1962. After that, I worked therapeutically with children at different institutions and in a longitudinal research project on child development.
In retrospect, I can see many different sources coming together in my becoming a psychoanalyst. I began my life within the atmosphere of an institution for training deaconesses in Uppsala. My father began his pastoral career there, acting as a deputy director. Later on, he became vicar in a rural area. At that time, vicars were also a kind of social worker, psychologist, etc. in such districts. This background certainly gave me a basic interest in human life and its problems. From the age of twelve, I went to school in Växjö, which meant living away from home in a rented room during the week. This triggered in me some emotional processes and a need to understand them. I remember that, in these early years, I found in the library a book on autosuggestion, written by one of the leading representatives of the Nancy school of hypnosis. This deepened my interest in psychological issues.
An incident that I think contributed to my choice of profession occurred when I was seventeen years old. I went for a period to Malmö, a city in the south of Sweden, to prepare for an examination. At the same time, my mother also went to Malmö with my youngest sister, then one year old. The reason for my m