Coming to psychoanalytic training in the 1980’s from an academic background in social anthropology, as well as many years’ experience working in family therapy services, Rosine Jozef Perelberg has established herself over the last three decades as one of the most prominent and influential writers and clinicians in contemporary British psychoanalysis. She is the former President of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Perelberg has written and edited 12 books, the latest being Sexuality, Excess and Representation, and for the editing of Psychic Bisexuality – a British-French Dialogue, she received the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis 2019 book prize for the best edited book. She has served on many editorial boards including the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

David Bell (born 1950) has made contributions to psychoanalysis which combine depth and range. In demand internationally as a speaker and teacher, he lectures and publishes on psychoanalytic theory and technique and on the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature, philosophy and politics.

Julia Fabricius had a first career as a senior clinical nurse before reading Psychology at UCL and training as a Psychoanalyst and then as a Child and Adolescent Psychoanalyst.  She has been in private practice since 1990 and a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst since 2000.  She has written a number of papers about psychoanalytic views of Nurses and Nursing.  She was Director of the Anna Freud Centre between 1996 and 2002 and since then worked full time in private practice. 

Irma Brenman Pick was a Distinguished Fellow, Supervising and Training Analyst and former President of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She was born and raised in South Africa, coming from an uneducated background but travelled to London in 1955 to train as a child psychotherapist and then in 1960 as a psychoanalyst.  Brenman Pick was known among her colleagues as a psychoanalyst with a fine clinical intuition, coupled with a distinctive, lively and clear way of formulating from material, and for engaging with patients in a deep, multi-layered and nuanced way. she stressed the need for the analyst not only to receive projections, but also to do her own internal psychic work, and to consider how such projections from the patient interact with the analyst’s own internal world. 

Eric Brenman was an astute and compassionate clinician, who stressed the need to acknowledge the reciprocity of the analytical relationship, so that both analyst and patient can recognise the value they have for one another. He explored the internal and external forces that can interfere, both in the analyst and in the patient, with a stable internalisation of a good object. The recovery of the good object relationship, which follows the working through of the depressive position, is the central task of every analysis.  

John Klauber (1917–1981) was a highly popular and well-loved analyst who died suddenly and unexpectedly only one year into his term as President. Born in London to Hungarian parents, he had a love of classics but went to study history at Oxford University having obtained a scholarship to do so. Graduating in 1939, he served as an intelligence officer during the second world war before training in medicine and qualifying in 1951, having already started psychoanalytic training in 1948. He became an analyst with a full practice which he maintained in addition to contributing significantly to the BPAS as a training analyst and to the scientific life of the society. His attention to aspects of the analytic encounter, which became the title of his well-known book, also meant that he was a popular lecturer both in the UK and the world including France, Holland, Austria, Norway, Poland and lecturing extensively in various parts of the United States. His untimely death also occurred whilst he just as he was about to take up the post of Freud Memorial Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis at University College London. 

Walter “Wally” Joffe (1922–1974) was a highly popular president who tragically and unexpectedly died during his tenure in office. Born in South Africa, he initially trained in medicine before developing an interest in psychoanalysis and moving to Britain in order to train at the British Psychoanalytical Society. Three years after qualifying in 1953, he returned to South Africa for family reasons where he laid the foundations psychoanalytic training there through liaison with the British Society.  Returning to London in 1961, he was highly involved in the running of the BPAS and was the Director of the Clinic in 1969. This paved the way for his election as President in 1972. 

He was known for his unbounded enthusiasm for all matters psychoanalytic in addition to his warmth and generosity. In addition to posts at Middlesex hospital and University College London, he was an editor for both International Journal of Psychoanalysis and for the British Journal of Medical Psychology. Always willing to collaborate, he worked with Joe Sandler on the Hampstead Index and as William Gillespie (1975) noted, Walter Joffe died just as he “was reaching the summit of a career which still held out immense promise for the future”.  

photo by Boris Bennett

Wilfred Bion was born in northwest India and was educated at boarding school in England.  He fought in France in the Tank Regiment during the First World War and was awarded the DSO (Distinguished Service Order), and, by the French Government, the Légion d'Honneur. Around 1946 Bion entered into training analysis with Melanie Klein, and he became a full Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1950. Bion is best known for the work stemming from his psychoanalysis of patients in psychotic states, by building on and expanding Klein’s concepts of projective identification and the two positions, paranoid-schizoid and depressive, in dynamic equilibrium, and by introducing the notion of Container-Contained (♀ ♂); and by elaborating a theory of thinking with emotional experience at its core. 

W. Clifford Scott (1903-1997) was born in Ontario Canada and whilst very keen on science was strongly encouraged to study medicine as a guarantee for making a living. After qualifying, which included a break to complete an intercalated BSc specializing in genetics, he became interested in psychiatry and consequently gained experience in Toronto, New York and Baltimore simultaneously encountering psychoanalytic ideas. He consequently travelled to London where, accepted for training by Ernest Jones, he was Melanie Klein’s first candidate to qualify. Posts at the Maudsley Hospital and later at the Cassel Hospital, in addition to working with the Emergency Medical Service during the second world helped develop the understanding between deep-seated and long-term conflicts and the more contemporary ones that led to the presenting problems. 

W. Clifford Scott was highly active in the British Psychoanalytical Society, sitting on the Training Committee, being Director of the Institute Clinic and then also becoming president in 1953. His tenure was cut short through the opportunity to return to Canada where he was instrumental in the formation of the Canadian Psychoanalytical Society, of which he became the first President, and to the development of a training organisation for psychoanalysts in Canada. This continues to flourish.  

Sylvia May Payne CBE (1880 – 1976) was a pioneer of psychoanalysis having originally trained at the London School of Medicine for Women, later becoming the Royal Free Hospital, and qualified in 1906. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her work as a medical officer in the first world war, the experience of which also evoked her interest in psychoanalysis. After an initial analysis with Edward Glover, she travelled to Berlin and underwent analysis with Hans Sachs. Qualifying as a psychoanalyst with the British Society in 1922 she became a strong advocate for psychoanalysis and played a very significant part in the controversial discussions between 1941 and 1945, being trusted by all parties and also managing pragmatics including organisng a stenographer to produce highly accurate records so that no member would miss the discussions. Elected president in 1944 she emerged as a leading member of the Independent Group and was elected president again in 1954 following the sudden departure of Clifford Scott.