Obituary

(1915-2003)

Dorothy Davidson was the last surviving member of the small group of analysts who created the Child Analytic Training within the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP). Through the hard work of this determined group, a small private training was established which produced some fine child analysts and, against the odds, lasted over thirty years. Her death came within the same year that the Child Analytic Training has decided to draw to a close for the same reasons that concerned those setting up the training: ‘manpower, money, libido and protocol’. Dorothy noted this in a 1986 paper tracing the history of the child training where she also writes, ‘My qualification for attempting to write this story is that I happen to be the only person, other than Fordham himself, who has been directly involved with the training over the whole [of its first] twenty-five years’. Her interest in the training continued throughout her retirement, so that she alone remained involved until its ending.

She was born Dorothy Tate in 1915 in Durham, where her father worked as a mining engineer. He died of pneumonia when she was about seven, at which point, she, with her older sister and two brothers, moved with their mother to a small village on the coast, north of Newcastle. A second loss came with the death of her older brother in a motorcycle accident. Shy, under-confident and under-achieving, Dorothy studied domestic science and worked as an assistant matron in a school until her potential was recognized by one of her supervisors. She trained in social work in Manchester before qualifying in psychiatric social work at the London School of Economics, where she met and became friends with Kate Newton. She worked as a psychiatric social worker at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, and in 1952 was offered a post at Paddington Green Children's Hospital, where Winnicott was consultant. Drawing upon her talents and Jungian training, Winnicott encouraged her to tre