Matti Tuovinen: 1931 - 2011

Matti Tuovinen, MD., PhD., Medicinalråd [honorary title awarded by the Finnish Government], passed away at his home in Helsinki at 78 years of age, 27 January 2011. He was born in Helsinki 15 April 1931.

Matti graduated from the Normaalilyseo upper secondary school in 1949, became a medical doctor at Helsinki University in 1958, and completed his doctoral thesis in 1973. During his career, he acted as a Junior Registrar at the Clinic of Nervous and Mental Diseases at Helsinki University Hospital, a Hospital Physician in Stockholm, Sweden, a Specialist in Forensic Psychiatry at the Helsinki University Psychiatric Hospital, a Senior Physician at the Mustasaari State Hospital, Associate Professor at Oulu University, and from 1975 to 1994 as Chief Medical Officer of Turku Prison Mental Hospital.

Matti Tuovinen graduated as a psychoanalyst in 1967 and was a training analyst for several decades. As an analyst, he never settled for models and modes of thinking that limit the thinking of our fellow human beings. Without being openly rebellious, Matti liked to ponder on the psychological, existential and historical questions relating to our work. Something of his character comes to the fore in a photograph taken of his study group, where he sits with his friend Tapani Salminen holding a sign with the text “the opposition”.

A passion for questioning and reflection influenced his choice of a career as a psychoanalyst and a forensic psychiatrist. In what other field of work can you deal as much with life's basic questions of life? Matti continued investigating the limits of knowing and intuiting. This made him an appreciated teacher and supervisor.

His interest in psychoanalysis was already awakened at the end of his medical studies and led to his moving to Stockholm with his wife and two eldest children to train as a psychoanalyst. It was there, too, that his orientation towards forensic psychiatry began, and became the theme of his dissertation.

We first became acquainted when we