Sonny S. Davidson—1911–1961

Sonny Sneir Davidson died on 7 August, 1961, at the age of 50. He was drowned while on holiday in Scotland, fishing for salmon in the River Spey.

Sonny Davidson was born in Latvia, whence his family emigrated to South Africa when he was 10 years old. He started his medical studies in Cape Town and in 1933 came to England to continue at Guy's Hospital, qualifying in 1938. During his student days he had been interested in many branches of medicine and on qualifying he went into general practice. During World War II he served with the R.A.M.C. and became actively interested in psychiatry, doing some psychiatric work, so that by the time he returned to England in December 1945 he knew that his interest lay in this field and especially in psycho-analysis. He applied for training at the Institute of Psycho-Analysis and qualified in 1949. In the meantime, he worked for short periods at Napsbury and St. Ebba's Hospitals before going on to the Cassel Hospital, Richmond, where he remained for eight years, leaving to go into full-time private psycho-analytic practice.

It was while he was at the Cassel that his particular interest in, and gift for, dealing with extremely disturbed and psychotic patients became manifest, an interest which he retained to the end of his life. Later he took up child analysis and, as a training analyst, undertook the analysis of candidates at the Institute.

Davidson throughout his life had the deepest concern for human beings and human relationships; this concern runs like a thread throughout his interests. It first found expression in political activities; but, although he never lost his interest in political and social affairs, he increasingly turned for understanding to the inner workings of the mind, as can be seen from his moving from general practice to psychiatry and from psychiatry to psycho-analysis. The same theme runs through the development of his work with psychotics. At first, when he took on psychotic patients for treatment at