Ruth Thomas

Ruth Thomas died on 4 April 1983. At her funeral on 12 April the following tributes were read by Dr Clifford Yorke and Mr Kenneth Brill.

The death of Ruth Thomas, at the age of 80, after a long illness which she bore with characteristic courage and stoicism, is a matter of deep sadness for her friends, her colleagues, her former patients and the many child analysts in so many parts of the world whom she had taught or supervised. And nowhere will that loss be felt more deeply than at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Course and Clinic of which, during some of her most productive and influential years, she was a pillar and a singular source of strength.

I speak of the Child-Therapy Course, and not of the Clinic alone, on account of Ruth Thomas' close association with that course from its early times. The association was foreshadowed during the Second World War when she was analysed by Anna Freud, to whom she was to be such a support in later years. A former head of a teacher-training college, she herself was outstanding as a teacher; and her seminars were admired for the clarity of thought and lucidity of presentation which she brought to them. Her course in ego development and ego psychology was rightly celebrated. But it was not simply as a lecturer that she played a key part in the training. From the beginning she was a training analyst; and a number of her analysands achieved distinction in their professional lives. If that is a measure of her qualities as an analyst? and I believe that it is—it is hardly surprising that her advice was sought, not only on problems of child analysis but on those of adults as well. Her clinical good sense likewise ensured that no supervisor was more widely sought after than she.

She became Course Tutor. Her standing and influence grew through these years of dedication until, as Director of Training to whom a new Course Tutor was responsible, she was, for many, something of an éminence grise. She was not, however, remote; and the worried stud