Doris Wills: 1908 - 1993

A Memorial Meeting to Doris Wills, who died November 23, 1993, was held at the Anna Freud Centre on January 3, 1994. The Chair was taken by Anne-Marie Sandler, and a number of Centre staff members and friends paid tribute to her, amongst them Hansi Kennedy whose address we publish below.

We are also including two obituary notices that convey something of Doris Wills’ achievements and the important part she played both in the formative years of the Centre and in the growth and dissemination of the psychoanalytic theory of child development, pure and applied.

We take the opportunity of adding a reprint of one of her key papers on psychological development in the blind - one of many and diverse contributions that led to her international standing in the field.

Clifford Yorke

In talking of Doris Wills’ contribution to the work of the Centre I have to go back to its earliest history. She was appointed to the staff as Psychologist when the clinic opened and worked there for over thirty years.

In the first year, the Training Course - which started five years before we had a clinic - consisted of eight trainees, nearly all former workers in the Hampstead War Nurseries. One year later, in 1948, six new candidates were accepted, one of whom was Doris. There was not the same contact as we have today between students in different years of training. Most of us worked in child guidance clinics where we also saw our training cases; seminars were held in the evenings in the lecturers’ homes or in the library at No. 20 Maresfield Gardens; meetings of the whole student body were infrequent.

Doris Wills worked as a psychologist at the old Tavistock Clinic before and during the early part of her training. As you will read elsewhere in these tributes, Doris was already active in those days in setting up the Association of Child Psychotherapists. She was therefore well aware of the three training courses available. She knew Ruth