Agi Bene-Moses

Agi Bene-Moses died on May 10th in Jerusalem. She was a senior child psychoanalyst at the Hampstead Clinic, where she had played an active part in the training and research activities for many years. Born in Hungary, she came to England via Switzerland, and qualified first as a Child Psychotherapist, going on to train with the British Psycho-Analytical Society. She was a prominent member of the psychoanalytic community, and as a training analyst and supervisor of both adult and child cases was very much in demand. She left England some two years before her death to join Rafael Moses, and tragically fell ill a year after her emigration. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in London on May 18th.

Anna Freud paid her the following tribute:

‘I speak of Agi Bene-Moses’ death to-day since I have known her longer than most of the friends and colleagues gathered here in the Crematorium to pay tribute to her memory. It is now 29 years since she and her friend Anne-Marie walked through the doors of the Hampstead Clinic, urgently demanding to be trained. The request was granted and from that day to the day when she left England to begin a new life in Israel, Agi Bene was an active, vital, stimulated and stimulating member of our Hampstead community.

There are not many people among us here who believe that the events in this world are regulated by a benevolent superior power, and who try to ascribe intention and meaning even to the most tragic happenings. On the contrary, most of us are convinced of the workings of a blind fate, that is, a fate so blind that it is apt to by-pass the old who have already carried their plans and tasks to completion, and to take its victims from those who stand in the middle of life.

I see Agi Bene (as we have known her) as a victim of this kind. She had passed from the status of student to that of teacher; from dependence to independence in matters of thinking; from joining institutions created by others to being in a position of setting up