Open-minded Visionary

New Zealand-born psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall, who made significant contributions to the understanding of perversions, psychosomatic symptoms, female sexuality, creativity and addictions, has died aged 91. Her clinical insights, theoretical originality, open-mindedness and lack of dogmatism made her unique throughout her 60-year career and enabled her to create a valuable link connecting the Anglo-Saxon and French psychoanalytical schools. Born Joyce Carrington in New Zealand, she was the daughter of a family of traders who had emigrated from Britain. She discovered psychoanalysis in her teens through reading Sigmund Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and resolved to study psychology. After marrying Jimmy McDougall, whom she met at the drama club of the University of Otago, she moved to London in 1949 to pursue her psychoanalytical training, accompanied by her husband and two young children. She gained a substantial international reputation as a clinician and theoretician, and her many publications, elegantly linking the French, British, and American traditions, found a widespread welcome. Her work was translated into 10 languages, including Japanese and Hebrew. When invited by the Dalai Lama in 1993 to explain to him the aim of psychoanalysis, she replied: “To find one’s truth about oneself.” He responded that this was also the aim of Buddhist meditation.

Joyce McDougall: 26 April 1920 – 24 August 2011