Siv Boalt Boethius 15 July 1937 – 28 July 2024

Siv passed away on Sunday 28 July. She had been ill for a relatively short time with an aggressive cancer.

A life has come to an end, but the memories of Siv both from her professional and private life will stay.

Siv was a remarkable person with a lot of empathy and warmth and as a professional she had a clear understanding of task and structure. She was trained as child and youth clinician and continued as a psychoanalyst. Her research was mainly focused on group and organisational issues including group supervision and psychotherapy training.

Siv was Professor Emerita at Stockholm University, licensed as a psychologist and psychoanalyst, as well as a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA).

Siv started her professional career as a child psychologist at Skå, an institution that was very progressive in regarding methods and treatment. Later she was principal and director of Erica Foundation, an independent institute, financed by the government, providing child and adolescent psychotherapy, training, and research. She was a visiting professor at Copenhagen University and responsible for research projects on, for instance, group psychotherapy for young adults and child psychotherapy. In 2010, as Professor Emerita, she started an advanced level training programme at the department of psychology, University of Stockholm.

Siv was engaged far beyond her local and regional positions. She was president of the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (EFPP) from 2002 to 2007. She was also, in 2014, co-chair of Task Force Institutional Issues that developed into the Institutional Issues Committee of the IPA. She stayed in this position for nine years. EFPP is an umbrella organisation that is grounded on membership of twenty-six countries and 15,000 members.

In 2013, Siv was honoured by the Swedish authorities for her contributions to help change and improve life by working for organisations and for her focus on children and young adu