Phil Richardson, 1950–2007

One of the best liked British clinical psychologists died during the early morning of 4 December 2007. Professor Phil Richardson was a teacher, an academic and professional leader, a psychoanalyst, a researcher, a true ‘renaissance man’ who embodied the best qualities of the sensitive scientist-practitioner. One of a handful of internationally recognized researchers in the discipline of psychoanalysis, Phil Richardson led the psychotherapy research programme of the world-famous Tavistock Clinic until his very untimely death, following a brief and violent struggle with pancreatic cancer, at the age of 57 years. As Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Essex, and Director of the Psychotherapy Evaluation Research Unit at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, Richardson held a key position in establishing psychoanalytic psychotherapy as an ‘evidence-based’ psychological therapy that could be recommended by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE). His earlier work on evaluating an in-patient programme for the behavioural treatment of intractable pain achieved international recognition and continues to be a model for similar programmes in the UK.

Richardson started his university career as an undergraduate student of French at University College London but soon found himself dissatisfied with the dry academic pursuit of his lifelong love – the French language. In the early 1970s he grew his hair, discontinued his course and joined a commune. His brief experience on the fringes of society bestowed on Richardson a capacity for empathy with the socially excluded, the suffering and the distressed that is rare and precious in practising clinicians. His interest in the mind and his remarkable intellectual capacity led him back to University College, but this time to the Psychology Department where he graduated with First Class Honours in 1974 with the Spearman Prize, and where his unusual sensitivity and capacity for understanding others made him a n