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On Friday, 4th April, 2014, at approximately 2.00 a.m., Harry Karnac, the distinguished bookseller and publisher, died at the age of ninety-four. Although he had never undertaken a psychological training, had never worked with patients, and had never taught a theory seminar, the name of Harry Karnac will be remembered long after those of most contemporary mental health clinicians have faded away. As the founder of the unique shop which still bears his name after more than half a century, and as the progenitor of a publishing firm which now produces approximately one hundred new psychotherapeutic titles each year (Massey, 2014), Harry Karnac's contribution as an educator of psychoanalytical students and as a disseminator of psychological culture remains unparalleled.
Born on 27th November, 1919, Harry Karnac became a professional bookseller early in his career, and by 1950 he had opened H. Karnac (Books), a small, unprepossessing shop at 58, Gloucester Road, in London S.W.7. At first, Karnac sold ordinary books (such as gardening manuals, biographies, novels, and such like). But one memorable day, Dr. Clifford Scott, a noted psychoanalyst who worked nearby at 49, Queen's Gate Gardens, in South Kensington, not far from Harry Karnac's shop, suggested that the young bookseller might do well to stock a pamphlet written by his psychoanalytical colleague Dr. Donald Winnicott. At this time, in the bleak post-World War II period, Harry Karnac knew virtually nothing about psychoanalysis, and although he regarded Dr. Scott's suggestion with a certain amount of scepticism, he nevertheless ordered some copies of Winnicott's publication The Ordinary Devoted Mother and Her Baby: Nine Broadcast Talks (Autumn 1949), privately printed in London by C.A. Brock and Company, and hence, not widely available. To Harry Karnac's great delight, the Winnicott pamphlet, based on the now legendary radio talks for the British Broadcasting Corporation, sold particularly well; and before long, Karn