Tapio Nousiainen 1922-2002

One of the central pioneers of Finnish psychoanalysis, Tapio Nousiainen, died at the age of 80 on 31 July 2002 in Helsinki.

Tapio Nousiainen served at the frontier during the war as an officer in the reserves, graduated in 1948 as a Candidate of Philosophy (fil. kand.), whereupon he joined the small group of Finnish psychologists and physicians, who, after the war, went abroad to seek psychoanalytic training.

In Finland at that time, the teaching and practice of psychology and psychiatry was almost exclusively based on descriptive, symptom-centred, and anatomical-physiological based models. The first Finnish psychoanalyst, Yrjö Kulovesi, who had received his training in Vienna in the 1 920s, thereafter setting up in private practice in Tampere, had died in 1943, at the early age of 55.

After the war, interest in psychoanalysis grew in Finland, especially among young professionals and trainees in the field of mental health care. The Association for Promoting Psychoanalysis in Finland was founded, and Tapio Nousiainen participated in its activities before leaving for Stockholm in 1950.

During his years in Stockholm in 1950-1953, Tapio Nousiainen underwent his own personal analysis, took part in the seminars required, and treated analysands under supervision. He earned his living mainly at the Psychotechnic Institute of the University of Stockholm, carrying out psychological tests for different hospitals and institutions in Stockholm.

Tapio Nousiainen returned to Helsinki in 1953, but still visited Stockholm every fortnight for two years, taking part in seminars, supplementing his personal psychoanalysis, and receiving supervision for treatments he had undertaken in Helsinki. In practice, Tapio Nousiainen was therefore the first psychoanalyst to practice in Helsinki. He received the right to practice independently as a member of the Swedish Psychoanalytical Society on 5 May 1956.

In 1964, the number of psychoanalysts who had returned to Finland from training abroad was suffi