M. Royden C. Astley, M.D—1911-1972

Doctor Royden Astley of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia died on July 7, 1972, while visiting along with his wife, Edna, their sons Roy and Malcolm and their families in the Boston area.

With his death the cause of psychoanalysis as a science and discipline appropriate to the university, its humanities, and its health professions has lost a champion and pioneer.

A native of Philadelphia and son of physician-parents, he left an established base in surgery and academic medicine in the 'forties to become in time a training psychoanalyst and faculty member of the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1956 he accepted the challenge to come to Pittsburgh to develop a psychoanalytic institute within the framework of the Department of Psychiatry of the School of Medicine of the University of Pittsburgh. Under his directorship, the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Institute and its later program in Child Psychoanalysis achieved notable growth and collaborative precedents within both academia and our Association.

From 1961 to 1964, Doctor Astley served as Secretary to the Board on Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He went on to be elected to the Presidency of the Association in 1968, and presided during 1969-1970. He was a founding member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Society.

To all that he addressed himself, Roy Astley brought an enormous breadth of sophistication in and compassionate acceptance of the human condition. His fine sense of irony and cool scepticism left him always aware of the instability and transience of organizations and groups. Never faltering in his passionate commitment to learning more, to widening the span of knowing awareness in himself and those around him, he could be impatient and distressed in the presence of narrow scientism and academic rigidity.

Resonant to poetry, literature, and the arts while yet deeply rooted in his medical heritage, Roy Astley exemplified the universal