Ulf V. Tidén 1925-1997

Our friend and colleague Ulf V. Tidén has died after many years of struggle against his illness. He worked full-time in private practice as a psychoanalyst until the autumn of 1992, when he had to diminish his work due to health reasons. Ulf was a great personality, appreciated for his sharp, clinical eyes, his knowledge and his wiseness, a life experienced with warmth by colleagues, patients and friends. We also remember how he would often confront one with his spiced humour, in drastic formulations, introduced by a disarming “but sweet friend!”

Ulf was born and grew up i Gävle, then studied in Uppsala, where he initially took an MA in philosophy and history of ideas. He then continued with medical studies that he completed in Stockholm, as he had become interested in psychoanalysis. He went into training analysis with Nils Haak and started his first supervised case in 1957. While training to become a specialist in psychiatry, he also became a gradually more experienced and appreciated psychoanalyst; a teacher for many years of psychoanalytic technique, and a supervisor for a number of psychoanalytic candidates. His teaching was also marked by his deep commitment and empathy for both the analysand and the becoming analyst's situation, where he could quickly grasp difficult clinical problems. During his chairmanship of the Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute 1978-1982, the training achieved its present democratic organisation.

Ulf worked for many years as a psychosomatic consultant of the gastroentereological clinic of St. Erik's Hospital and at the Nephrological Clinic of the same hospital, and at Huddinge Hospital too. He was eager to maintain his identity as a doctor, which he also realised as a consultant at the teenage treatment center “White mountains”, the final years of his clinical work. Ulf was also a passionate reader of psychoanalytic literature, biographies and political works. He participated in starting the social-democratic association in Sundbyberg, and