Guttorm Thorbjønsrud 1930-2001

Guttorm Thorbjønsrud died on 9 December 2001, after a short illness. He was 71 years old. With his death, we have lost one of the pillars of Norwegian psychoanalysis and clinical psychology. He was working with patients almost right until the end.

Guttorm Thorbjønsrud grew up on the Thorbjønsrud farm in øum as the youngest of nine siblings. This background gave him a special love of nature that remained with him all his life. We also think his background gave him a down-to-earth attitude and the profundity that was to characterize his subsequent work.

After graduation he began his studies in psychology at the newly established Faculty of Psychology at the University of Oslo. After completing his studies, he worked first at the Institute of Social Sciences where he did research on childrens' fantasy life together with Bjøn Christiansen. He trained in child and adolescent psychology at the Nic Waals Institute and later trained as a specialist in clinical psychology at the Dikemark and Ullevål hospitals, before embarking on full-time private practice as a psychologist. He trained early as a psychoanalyst and played an important role in the building up of psychoanalysis in Norway, especially after the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society was accepted as a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1975. Psychoanalysis became Guttorm Thorbjønsrud's main area of work.

He was first and foremost a clinician with a genuine ability for listening, for understanding the patient and helping him to find solutions where there seemed to be none. He had deep respect for the human mind and knowledge of its complexity. He was convinced that changes could be brought about by engaging in intimate dialogues with another person, and this practical hermeneutic attitude made him an expert on the psychology of change. At the same time, he was a profound and versatile thinker who wrote important scientific papers in the fields of psychoanalysis and psychology. His paper on psychoana