Lars Borje Lofgren: 1920-2010

Lars Börje Löfgren was born in Gävle, Sweden, 26 August 1920 and died 28 June 2010 in Mölnlycke, Sweden. He pursued his medical studies at the University of Uppsala and after some research work in physiology chose to specialize in psychiatry. As a psychiatrist, he worked at the Karolinska Hospital and later at the Södersjukhuset Psychiatric Clinic, where he was influential in bringing in psychodynamic competence into its then rather conservative Kretschmerian system. He started his training in psychoanalysis at the Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute and continued it at the Western New England Institute, while working 1958-60 at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachu-sets. After returning to Sweden in 1960, he became a member, and soon after, President, of the Swedish Psychoanalytic Society, which hosted the International Psychoanalytic Congress in Stockholm, 1963.

In 1964, Börje returned with his family to Stock-bridge to join the staff at the Austen Riggs Center. The Center was among the few hospitals in the USA (and the world) that used psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy to treat severely disturbed patients with borderline disorders. He served as Associate Clinical Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University from 1968 to 1973. He was associated with the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco from 1969 to 1972, and after that, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and the Brentwood Veterans Administration Hospital from 1972 to 1976, following which he entered private practice. He and his wife retired to Oregon in 1984. There, he served on the board of directors of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Rogue Valley Symphony Orchestra, for whom he was a tireless fundraiser. The Löfgrens returned to Sweden in 1996.

Börje was an early leader of Group Relations Conferences as practiced by the Tavistock Institute in both the United States and Sweden. He was a founding member of GREX in San Francisco, SCOLA in Los Angeles, and AGSLO in Swe