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Asta Bolin has edited a remarkable collection of essays, an hommage to a very remarkable woman, psychoanalyst and intellectual, 31 years after her death. For younger readers, some biographical information may be appropriate.
Stefi Pedersen (1897-1980) grew up with her mother in Berlin and trained as a pedagogue. She followed seminars at the Berliner Psychoanalytische Institut 1930-32 given by Bernfeld, Fenichel, Horney, Reik and Sachs. She wrote her first paper, “Psychoanalyse und Gymnastik” [Psychoanalysis and gymnastics] 1930. Like many other young analysts in Berlin during those years, she belonged to Die Linke, the leftist group. She considered herself a communist, as did her analyst, Otto Fenichel. When Hitler came to power in February 1933, all Jewish and leftist analysts had to leave Germany. Responding to an invitation from the Professor of Psychology, Harald Schjelderup, Fenichel and Wilhelm Reich emigrated to Norway together with a dozen other analysands. Stefi Pedersen was one of them.
She lived in Oslo for 11 years, graduated with her baccalaureate in 1934 and took her MA in psychology in 1942. In periods, she stayed in Prague in 1935-37 to follow courses at the Prague Psychoanalytic Institute (Bornstein, Löwenfeld, Annie Reich were among her teachers). She lectured on Freud's writings at Oslo University 1939-41, until the University was closed in the spring of 1942. Her mentor there, Schjelderup, organized the resistance against the German occupation at the university and was eventually jailed by the Nazis. In 1943, Stefi was in a group who fled to Sweden with 12 Jewish orphans. This escape was secretely organized by the prominent Norwegian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Nic Waal. Others in this group were Lotta Bernstein, later psychologist, Stockholm, and Nina Hackel, later pedagogue, Copenhagen. Stefi became an associate member of the Swedish Psychoanalytical Society in 1951 and a full member in 1955.
Her published effort consists of 60 works, including