Heden Brändavägen 9
SE-793 92 Leksand Sweden
kerstin@hopstadius.se

Kerstin Hopstadius, psychologist and psychotherapist, by the Swedish Psychological Association declared specialist in consultation and supervision in clinical psychology. She is an editor at Mareld publishing company, www.mareld.se, the leading publisher of family therapy/systemic therapy books in Sweden and on the board of editors for the Nordic Family Therapy Journal Fokus på Familien.

Her professional background is twelve years of initiating and developing two agencies for Church family counseling, the first one in a university town in the North of Sweden and the second in a rural district in the southern part of the country. She has also worked as maternity and child health care psychologist and has been engaged in child health care research with two studies based on life study interviews. Presently she has a private clinical practice, and does group facilitation for professionals within psychosocial work. She has been exploring collaborative ideas in family therapy training programs, and written several papers for the Swedish Family Therapy magazine. In 2007 she was nominated as Family Therapist of the year by the Swedish Family Therapy association.

A time of study at Galveston Family Institute (now Houston Galveston Institute ) in 1989 was the starting point for a continuous collaboration through years to come and connections with inspiring colleagues in several countries. In 1992 she translated five papers by Harlene Anderson and Harry Goolishian, which Mareld company published as the book Från påverkan till medverkan (From influence to collaboration). In 1999 she, together with her daughter Cecilia Brodin, translated Harlene Anderson’s book Conversation, Language and Possibilities. In 2005 she translated a book BOF –Barnorienterad Familjeterapi (Child oriented family therapy) from Norwegian into Swedish, and since then she has been taking part in the two-year training program for BOF-therapy.

Kerstin Hopstadius now lives in a small, traditional, Swedish village and presently she is documenting local language and lore in order to compile a book about the village together with a group of villagers. The voices from daily life hundreds of years back at the same place she finds surprisingly relevant for how families today struggle with their lives and face new situations.