Martha Harris (1920-1986)

Mattie Harris died last November at her home in Oxford. She had been ill since her tragic accident two and a half years earlier. Sad as this final period of her life had been, the loss which her death represented was a great one for her family and friends.

The early years of her life were spent on a Scottish farm, and her love of Scotland remained intense throughout her life. The heather colours so often seen on her person and in her home were indications of her fond re-creation of this beloved landscape. She was the eldest of four children, and enjoyed a lot of childhood pleasures with her two sisters and younger brother. For those who came to know her later, her beautiful soft breathy Scottish voice was one of her most treasured attributes. Her words tumbled over each other at times, always conveying the impression of Mattie's eager vitality. There was so much to say and understand, and most things were worth noticing and thinking about.

When she was eight years old, her family moved South and she spent those later years of childhood in Sussex, as part of a transplanted Scottish dairy-farming community. She enjoyed her school years hugely and threw herself into academic and sporting activities, dramatic productions, and an individualist's battling relationship with her school. She did very well at school and was determined to have a university education, so she taught herself the necessary Latin in a few months to fulfil university entrance requirements. She studied English Literature at London University, and her knowledge and appreciation of literature proved a continuously creative spring in her later career as a child psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. Indeed, she felt that her literary training had prepared her well for such work, and although she later acquired a psychology degree, the literary background was what she most valued.

She spent some years as a teacher, and then in 1950 came to the Tavistock Clinic, then in its old building in Beaumont Street, to tr