Margareta Bjerg Hansen 1921-2004

Margareta Bjerg Hansen, née Kremenak, died on the 16^th of September 2004, at the age of 82, after a prolonged period of illness.

Margareta Bjerg Hansen was born in Vienna on the 28^th of November 1921. Here, she grew up and became first a teacher of design and later a psychologist. She received her PhD in Psychology for her thesis “Der Eindruchswert der Augengegend auf Gründ schematischer Darstellungen”. Psychoanalysis was forbidden by the Nazis in Vienna, but at the end of the Second World War, Vienna's Psychoanalytical Society was revived and Psychoanalytical training recommenced. Margareta Bjerg Hansen was a member of the first postgraduate team and trained from 1946-1953 when she qualified as a psychoanalyst. In 1953, she married the Danish doctor, Erik Bjerg Hansen, whom she had met in her study group and they left Vienna for Denmark. In Denmark, it had not been possible to train as a psychoanalyst at that time, so Erik Berg Hansen elected to travel to Vienna to train there, where he met his future wife.

Margareta Bjerg Hansen joined the Danish “study group” and gave a lecture entitled “Über Sublimierung” in 1954. In 1956, she gave a lecture in clinical psychoanalysis: “En tvangsneurotisk patient” (An obsessive-compulsive patient). The couple were both active in founding The Danish Psychoanalytical Society in 1957. In 1970, Erik Bjerg Hansen suffered a stroke, and died a year later, only 53 years of age. Margareta Bjerg Hansen practiced as a psychoanalyst throughout her time in Denmark, but from 1973-1986, she was also employed as a psychologist in the Department of Child Psychiatry at Bispebjerg Hospital, Copenhagen. She was appointed as a training analyst in 1984 in the Danish Psychoanalytical Society; she was also a member of the Training Committee for many years and has trained and supervised many of the society's current members.

Margareta Bjerg Hansen continued living in the house that the couple had bought and furnished to cover the needs of psychoanalysts i