Tora Sandström

Emma Victoria "Tora" Sandström (12 March 1886 – 25 October 1949) was a Swedish psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. She was one of the very earliest psychoanalysts in Sweden and as early as the 1930s, she started a private psychotherapeutic clinic.

Biography Tora Sandström was born in Arnäs parish to a family of farmers. Her father's name was Johan Sandström and her mother was Katarina Charlotta. She furthered her education in philosophy and psychoanalysis and obtained a licentiate degree in philosophy but never completed her dissertation for a doctorate.

Psychoanalyst Sandström became interested in psychoanalysis and spent the 1920s and the first years of the 1930s in Vienna, Austria, where she conducted studies on the subject. She continued her studies when she came back to Stockholm. She studied so-called educational analysis with Alfhild Tamm and participated in the formation of the Finnish-Swedish psychoanalytical association in 1934 and for several years was also its secretary.

In her private practice, according to Nilsson, "She analyzed the current situation of her patients and encouraged them to live out their aggressiveness. Now she became increasingly dismissive of Freud's theories; she found his system filled with 'superstitious notions.'"

In 1949, Tora Sandström died in Stockholm.