Blog: Obituaries

Zygmunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman obituary by Eleanor Sawbridge Burton

Zygmunt Bauman, who died on 9th January this year, was a renowned and widely influential sociologist, whose intellectual influences included Sigmund Freud’s body of psychoanalytic theory. Bauman lived, and suffered, through the catastrophic upheavals of the Second World War and its aftermath. Born to Jewish parents in Poznań, Poland in 1925, his family fled upon the Nazis’ invasion in 1939. The Baumans escaped to the USSR and, several years later, Bauman enlisted in the Soviet-controlled First Polish Army, as part of which he fought in several battles.


Eric Rayner obituary by Jennifer Johns

My friend and colleague Eric Rayner, who has died aged 90, was a psychoanalyst, writer and teacher of remarkable empathy and independence.

As chair of the British Psychoanalytical Society’s board and council (1981-84), Eric was a driving force in ensuring that psychoanalysis should extend beyond London and was instrumental in setting up successful training courses away from the capital.


Obituary: John Forrester

It is with great regret that we learnt  of the death of Professor John Forrester, a distinguished Associate of our Society, on Tuesday 24th November.  He made an extensive contribution to the study of the history of psychoanalysis and was a great friend to our Society.

Professor Forrester’s close colleague, Simon Schaffer, has written a moving obituary, which is available on the University of Cambridge’s website: