Cathy Urwin 1949-2012

At the time of her death Cathy Urwin was a Consultant Child and Adult Psychotherapist and Research Fellow at the Tavistock Clinic, which she had joined in 2004. She was lead researcher on the Tavistock's Babies-in-Groups Study, and a senior member of the Autism Service for Children and Families. She was making a major contribution, as a teacher and supervisor, on the Child Psychotherapy doctoral programme at the Tavistock, and as the external examiner on the Child Clinical Doctorate at the British Association of Psychotherapists/Birkbeck. She was also teaching on the Adult Training of the British Association of Psychotherapists. The BJP pays tribute to her life and work - Ed.

This is an appreciation rather than an obituary, an account of a friendship which is so bound up with our work that the two are inextricable. It is a shock to lose a friend unexpectedly, with the painful mourning of what is not to be. There is the loss of the potential, of work uncompleted, and the future plans for travel, painting and sharing Cathy's beloved Cornwall.

Cathy Urwin was the first friend I [BA] met and made in July 1974 when I arrived in Cambridge to take up a postgraduate research post in the Medical Applications of Psychology Unit at 5 Station Road (aka the ‘Unit’), headed by Dr Martin Richards. At that time she was at King's College, having embarked on her doctoral research on language development in blind babies. To my great good fortune it transpired that we actually lived around the corner from each other, so it was possible to get to know her in a personal way from then. Possible to discover her fun, her intellectual rigour, her curiosity about people and to see the strength she had when confronted by personal conflicts and pain. This beginning became a solid foundation for a deep friendship which endured till she died in June this year.

By the early 1980s, having worked in Nottingham and Oxford for a while, Cathy returned to Cambridge to take up post-doctoral research work wi