Ignês Sodré Remembered

Ignês Sodré died on 4 May 2025 and we are only gradually coming to terms with the loss, which has deprived us of one of the most original minds among today’s psychoanalysts. Her freshness and clear thinking made her stand out from her contemporaries, and my personal debt to her is enormous, both as a friend and as a colleague.

I first met Ignês in a seminar at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and immediately enquired who this vivacious woman might be. I was not altogether pleased to find she was an analytic sibling, also in analysis with Hannah Segal, but gradually I believe I overcame most of my rivalry and grew to accept this gifted sister, to enjoy her brilliance and to benefit from it. The relationship was deepened through many years in Betty Joseph’s Workshop, where she was an important influence on her colleagues, including Michael Feldman, Ron Britton and especially her closest friend Priscilla Roth.

Ignês was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1945, the eldest of five children, who remained very close, even though geographically scattered. Her father was a charismatic lawyer, later CEO of a leading utility company, and her mother worked in Christie’s auction house in Rio.

Ignês studied psychology before moving to London in 1969 to begin her training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. She met Priscilla Roth when their children were small, and they remained close friends and collaborators for the rest of her life. They met weekly to discuss their ideas and to thrash out their papers. Priscilla helped her produce her book Imaginary Existences (2014a), and Ignês was working on Priscilla’s book Mapping the Landscape (Roth 2026) up to the time of her death. Ignês was close to her own children, Danny and Emily, and was delighted when Emily’s twins were born and proud of Danny’s success as a writer and translator. An important source of stability and creativity was Ignês’s relationship with her husband, the Chilean left-wing economist and Cambridge academic, Gabriel Palma, with