Psychiatric Bulletin (2003) 27: 278. doi: 10.1192/pb.27.7.278-a
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2003) 27: 278
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Professor Gerdt Erik Wretmark
Formerly Corresponding Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
Henry Walton
Gerdt Wretmark was prototypical of those overseas postgraduates who develop
an enduring attachment to their British institute and retain allegiance when
they return, magisterially specialised, to their
homeland.
Wretmark came from Sweden to the Institute of Psychiatry and assimilated
with quiet intensity all that London and Maudsley Hospital psychiatry had to
offer during 1955-56 (when he last spoke and wrote to me, at the end of his
life, it was about his writing on the quintessential London painter Hogarth,
with focus on his Bedlam scenes). He repeatedly returned to London, for
conferences at the Royal College and to meet professional friends, notably his
mentor Denis Leigh.
He was born in Malmö on 23 April 1918 (it was important to him that
two Williams, Shakespeare and Turner, had the same birthdate). His doctoral
thesis on The Peptic Ulcer Individual was presented in Lund in 1953,
and he was appointed Assistant Professor the following year. He became head of
the Department of Psychiatry at Linköping in 1956, was appointed
Professor in 1970 and worked there until he retired in 1983.
The principles he brought from the Maudsley were translated to Swedish
professional practice. Humane attitudes were paramount - staff had to discard
white clinical coats, and good communication was regarded a core element of
all clinical work. As a psychiatrist, he saw himself as duty-bound to instill
the same therapeutic attitude, not only in psychiatrists in training, but also
in medical students, general practitioners, physiotherapists and occupational
therapists. He set up practical demonstrations: his drying-out facility for
alcoholics - ministering to the affluent as well as the ‘down and
outs’ - was unforgettably dramatic for the benign detachment and
thoroughness of the procedure, in which all the local services were
marshalled. In 1978, the medical students of Linköping gave him a special
award for teaching. He was recognised as a pioneer in medical ethics in Sweden
and his widely-used textbook appeared in 1982.
He lived in Uppsala during 1985-89, his remarriage to Astrid Andersson
Wretmark lasting 24 years. Together they trained to qualify as ordinands in
the Church of Sweden in communication and counselling, and jointly studied
perinatal death as a pastoral problem. His youngest daughter Hanna was born in
1981; by former marriages he had four daughters: Ulla, Kerstin, Eva and Maria.
From 1989, he worked in private psychiatric practice in Visby for 10 years,
and in 2000 published Möten Broar: Berättelser ur minnet
(Encounter Bridges: Stories from my memory). He was always culturally aware,
and from his youth he collected Chinese art.
He died on 29 December 2001 of liver cancer, probably from the bile duct.
He wanted Astrid to conduct the funeral service in Visby Cathedral, but she
chose instead to speak during the service, of his capacity for dialogue and
his redeeming sense of humour. His ashes are buried in the family grave at
Malmö.
