Obituary: Imre Szecsödy

Associate professor Imre has died at the age of 92. His passing leaves a deep feeling of loss and sadness among us colleagues in the Swedish psychoanalytic community.

Imre was born and raised in Budapest and attended an English boarding school grounded by his grandfather. The family lived in the area of a newly opened psychiatric clinic where Imre’s father was the manager and the hospitalized patients assisted the medical families. These experiences seem to have had a formative effect on Imre’s future choice of profession, as he chose to qualify as a medical doctor and psychiatrist. In 1956, at the age of 28, he went to Sweden like many Hungarians the same year.

After first working as a nursing assistant and studying Swedish, Imre was granted an exemption to work as a doctor and later obtained Swedish medical licence. For his training as a psychoanalyst, he went for a few years to the United States and the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute in New Haven.

Returning to Sweden, he got a job at the psychiatric clinic at Södersjukhuset, where he was inspired by several older, well-known colleagues. It was not long before Imre would participate in and take the initiative for development in psychiatric care. He was involved in starting the first psychiatric day care centre in Sweden and the Working Group for Studies in Leadership and Organization (AGSLO). After that, he participated in the Nacka project, which initiated the sectorisation of psychiatric services in Sweden.

Over the years, Imre became increasingly interested in educational issues and in creating optimal conditions for learning. His continued professional career led him to the Mental Health Agency (Mentalvårdsbyrån), which, thanks to his contribution, developed into a training institute for future psychotherapists. Subsequently, he took the initiative to start and lead an Educational Service Unit at Beckomberga psychiatric hospital and to start stage 1 and stage 2 trainings for psychotherapists, trainin