Liane Aukin 1936-2016

I met Liane in the 1990s when we were both training with the Centre for Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy (CPP) in London. At the point when she began the training, she had already had a very full life, first as a stage and film actress, then as a radio producer and director, and finally as a writer, creating dramas for radio, television and the stage. For television her work included some of the early episodes of BBC TV's EastEnders, while for the theatre her play about the big-band leader, Ivy Benson, Silver Lady, was produced at the Birmingham Rep. She was highly respected as a director, and was especially influential in promoting women's theatre, as has been recognized with the establishment of a Liane Aukin archive in the Women's Theatre Collection at the University of Bristol.

After completing her training and the closure of the CPP, Liane applied to and was accepted by the London Centre for Psychotherapy (LCP), whereas I became a member of the British Association of Psychotherapists (BAP). We nevertheless stayed in touch and remained friends until the end. I was aware of her active involvement with the LCP and I think this was typical of the way in which she always fully engaged. She had regrets about the merger between the LCP, Lincoln Centre for Psychotherapy and BAP which she expressed to me, feeling deeply the loss both of the LCP, with its own distinctive identity, and of its building, which she admired.

Active involvement was always a trademark of Liane's personality and she made her contributions in a thoughtful but forthright manner. Being a writer she was able to apply her specialized skills to her therapeutic work, for example by running a writing workshop group for long-term and complex cases at the Willesden Centre for Psychotherapy, which she wrote about in an article called ‘Peeping out from behind the pages’ (Aukin, 2000). In this work she encouraged the innate creativity that she believed everyone owns, and was often moved by being witness to the d