Steen Visholm

Steen Visholm was born in December 1955 and died in November 2025. He held a master’s degree in psychology and a PhD. He worked for many years as professor at Roskilde University/Denmark, as staff member at the organizational psychology education at Institute of Group Analysis (IGA) in Copenhagen for more than 25 years. He also ran a private practice.

Steen was the founder and leader of MPO - the master’s programme in organisational psychology at Roskilde University. The master’s programme has been running successfully for more than 25 years and is fully booked every year. Establishing and running the MPO was his life’s work. During his professional life Steen was the director and staff member in a countless number of group relations conferences, at MPO only more than 60 conferences.

Steen was president of ISPSO during the covid period, and together with the planning committees he developed the ISPSO meetings to also include online formats.

Steen had great strength in his intellectual capacity. He was able to see patterns and special phenomena. He was eloquent and he was exceptionally creative in his thinking. Steen never stopped exploring the works of Melanie Klein, and he is known for his development of the understanding of family and sibling dynamics in organizations. He wrote a book about this topic which was published in Danish and English: “Family Psychodynamics in

Organizational Contexts. The Hidden Forces that Shape the Workplace”. He has also published books in Danish and edited together with Torben Heinskou “Psychodynamic Organisational Psychology - working below the surface” (2004), and “Psychodynamic organisational psychology II”, widely sold books (in Danish), “Couple psychology” together with Poula Jakobsen (1996, also in Danish). He has contributed to several books and published several articles. He was always interested in leadership and societal issues, organizational dynamics, physical places and the psychological elements in the climate debate.

We have known him for many years, as colleague at OPU/IGA Copenhagen (organizational psychology education) and as leader at MPO, from work and membership in ISPSO and various smaller activities. He had great confidence in his colleagues’ and staffs’ capacity to take up difficult roles and tasks. At the same time, he could get quite annoyed if he considered you hadn’t thought everything through well enough - or rather had ideas he didn't agree with. Steen could be very direct but was in his own way also a caring colleague and leader.

Steen was also quirky with a particularly subdued sense of humour and could laugh heartily without a sound. Apart from his thinking and leadership of MPO, we will remember him for his great pleasure with his family with three children, his joy of travelling with his children and his wife Pia. He also experienced the joy of becoming a grandfather. We both clearly remember his daughter on his 60th birthday saying: “you are the best father I could have”.

His son and daughter participated in MPOS 25 years anniversary, a day that emphasized his contributions to the development of MPO and the psychodynamic understanding of organisations. The anniversary showed how much his thoughts and humour are missed, and also that the organisational willingness to develop and maintain the MPO further was present. He would appreciate the further development.

In fond memory of Steen

Annemette Hasselager and Birgitte Bonnerup