Terttu Eskelinen

On 12 February, Terttu Eskelinen ( - ), a beloved teacher, friend and colleague, passed away. She had arrived in Barcelona after living in several European countries following her psychoanalytic training.

Terttu Eskelinen was born in Pielavesi, a small town in northern Finland, which she always remembered fondly, especially the snowy forest landscapes where she spent her childhood. She attended school in Finland, where she learned Swedish and other languages due to the fluctuating frontiers of the time.

At a young age, Terttu Eskelinen left Finland, her native country, to move to Switzerland to continue her psychological and psychoanalytic training. There she met and worked with Raymond de Saussure and Jean Piaget. During her stay in Switzerland, she met the Catalan psychoanalyst Pere Folch, who would later become her husband. She had her first analytic training at the Swiss Society of Psychoanalysis, which she completed at the British Psychoanalytical Society, where she was educated by such teachers as Anna Freud, Hanna Segal, Ester Bick, Betty Joseph, Herbert Rosenfeld, Donald Meltzer and others. This experience was fundamental to her as a psychoanalyst and as a person. It was the time of consolidation of Kleinian ideas in Great Britain and the beginning of their wide influence in other European countries.

Once settled in Catalonia, she soon experienced the country, its language and culture, and the fight for freedom and democracy in times of the Franco dictatorship. In addition to all the restrictions of a dictatorial regime, the use of the Catalan language was outlawed. Terttu Eskelinen was a woman of firm convictions and admirable vitality, with great love for her husband Pere Folch, for her daughters Laura and Helka, and for her grandchildren. Her home, always open to friends, was a pleasant and welcoming place where friends would enjoy the generosity, friendship, conversations and humour of Terttu and Pere.

Terttu’s broad vision of psychoanalysis stimulated her i