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WC: So, we'll start by asking you in the broadest sense, how you became an analyst. What were the things that led you originally into medicine and from there, into analysis?
JK: Well, that's fairly easy. I was the third daughter of a medical family. My father and my grandfather were doctors. Grandfather was a radiologist and my father was a bacteriologist and I was the third daughter and I think I was allowed to do what a son would have done. They realized they wouldn't have a son, I think. So, I was given permission to follow the medical path that a son would have followed. And so I went into medicine and it suited me. I had no problems about that. It suited me in terms of the interest in science, but also the interest in people, it combined things quite well.
WC: You already had both turns of mind, as it were, the scientific and the orientation towards people.
JK: Yes. And so I went to medical school and actually I was thinking, the other day, I was rereading Derry MacDiarmid's obituary, who was an SAP member, and he was a medical student with me. He was older because he went into medicine later, I think partly because he wanted to do psychiatry and train as an analyst. So, he was a co-medical student with me and he started my interest in the analytic process and in Jungian analysis.
WC: How well did you know him?
JK: Oh, I knew him well, he was a longstanding friend, in fact. And I think he also got me thinking about the social aspect, he was very interested in the social deprivation aspects and how that contributed to ill health. So, I think he got me thinking in ways that I might not otherwise have done. So then I qualified. Initially I went into pathology, following my father's path and realized fairly quickly that that didn't really suit me, even though one of the things I was doing was some research on brain chemicals, 5HT, things like that. I was doing a little bit of research in that area. But it took me too far away from people I think. So I did a bit of paedi