Giles is in the second row, with the moustache.
From AJA: John Daniel, Moira Duckworth, Liz Greene, Martin Stone
From SAP: Camilla Bosanquet, Lawrence Brown, David Howell, Judith Hubback, Rosemary Gordon, Andrew Samuels
From IGAP: Giles Clark, Renos Papadopoulos
From BAP: Nellie Hadzienesti, Joan Reggiori, Hester Solomon.
GILES CLARK 17.12.1947 – 23.03.2019
Before he moved to Sydney in 1995, Giles was an important member of IGAP in London, and colleagues remember him with gratitude and affection.
Giles was a man of great warmth and lively humour.
He was a fine supervisor, both supportive and undogmatically educative. I still remember some of the leads into better practice that he gave me- and the New Dawn rose that he planted outside his basement practice room, which amazingly managed to flourish there, to his delight. He was a gifted clinician, and as candidates we learned a lot through his readiness to be at home with some of the further reaches of psyche. The huge enthusiasm he brought to his lectures on C19 philosophers showed another side of him.
Giles was one of the important people in IGAP’s early days, when it was still forging its identity and distinctive approach. He had a great capacity for taking pains, and I remember meeting with him and another member on evening after evening to refine and re-refine the documents about our Programme of Preparation; he gave attention to every phrase. His own particular blend of classical and developmental approaches was invaluable too in IGAP’s relationships with the other groups, and he and Renos Papadopoulos did a great deal to build paths into greater cooperation with them.
Ann Shearer
Although a few years behind Ann in the IGAP programme of preparation, I also knew Giles, firstly as an extremely astute, challenging, yet compassionate, Review Committee member, and Dialogues examiner; and also as a perceptive teacher and excellent lecturer on (among other topics) the 19th century antecedents of analytical psychology, anxiety, and difficult aspects of the human psyche. I know our student cohort was dismayed when he announced that he was moving to Australia with his family in the early 1990s. Like many, I’ve missed him continually since he left.
Diane Zervas Hirst
I still have Giles’ attentive expression and voice in my head whenever I feel challenged, stuck or distressed in my practice. He was a formative influence when pregnancy and the early stages of motherhood grounded me in London some thirty years ago and I had to transfer some of the last part of my training in Zurich to London. He embraced both ends of the reductive/prospective spectrum in a way that I have never forgotten, entering into dreams in great depth with both intuition and feeling. His vitality was enlivening and reassuring though never intrusive and I too still miss him greatly.
Johanna David