Obituary Notice

Michael Fordham died on 14 April 1995, only a few months before his ninetieth birthday, for which celebrations and gifts were being prepared. In spite of his frail health he would have enjoyed the occasion and been pleased that the present-day members of the Society of Analytical Psychology, and other professionals and friends, were showing him the affection they felt for him, as well as their high regard for his dedication to analysis, in his own bold and creative way, over so many decades.

In the history of analytical psychology, Fordham's position and contributions are unique. He was one of the last analysts here in Great Britain to have known Jung. Not only did he admire and indeed idealize him, his work was imbued with love for him, a love which survived times of being angry, when Jung's shadow had come, briefly, between them. He put the love and admiration into action: in his personal analytical work, in his successful leadership efforts in founding (with six other early English Jungians) the Society of Analytical Psychology, in his participation in the expanding work of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, in his analyses of adult and child patients, in his supervisions, his seminars, his chairing of committees, his inspired creation of the Children's Section and the Child Analytic Training (with willing and able co-workers), his many lectures, papers and books. The leading motif in all those activities was carrying Jung's work forward: he did that not only in launching this Journal and editing it for fifteen years, in being one of the most energetic of the panel of Editors of the nineteen volumes of the Collected Works of Jung, but also in his expansion of Jungian theory and clinical practice. I would be hard pressed to decide which of those many activities should be considered the single most important one, since they were all interwoven and together constitute the large picture of the Michael we knew. While eac