You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It was my good fortune that for several years Rosie Parker supervised my clinical work. With rigour, compassion, intellectual daring, subversive humour, she embodied everything that is of enduring value in the world of psychotherapy. It is a world diminished by the loss of this distinguished woman. She both respected psychoanalytic tradition and also interpreted it according to her special style and originality, profound and with a light touch all her own.
The quality of Rosie's attention was remarkable. She listened in a very particular way: absorbed, speculative, alert to the pleasures of paradox and new ideas. Always at the heart of her clinical thinking was the depth of her understanding of the unique and elusive qualities of each person's experience. She actually spoke rather little. Nothing she said was inexact, insistent or insufficiently serious about the conflicts, perils and disappointments of human existence. Every supervisory exchange was enlivened by her generosity and encouragement, evoking in me the courage and optimism to envision different meanings and possibilities. She helped me find words to account for so much of the surprising, diverse and disorderly aspects of human experience. There are though no words for how much I miss her.
Ruth Simmons
Guild of Psychotherapists, WPF Therapy