Abstract
Published online in The Guardian 27/09/13 theguardian.com
My friend and colleague, Bryan Boswood, who has died aged 80, was a group analyst and psychotherapist with a rare combination of gifts in practice, teaching and organisational leadership. His contribution as a training analyst – with whom therapists have therapy for their training – means practitioners in many parts of the world owe their sense of adjustment, the quietness of their inquiry, and its depth and resolving benefits, to the years spent with him. People felt safe with Brian, whose approach was enlivened by metaphors from his previous career as a vet.
Born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, and educated at Bury grammar school Lancashire, he gained degrees in natural sciences and veterinary medicine at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he met his wife, Janet. They married in 1959, the year he joined the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. That affiliation cost them membership of the Plymouth Brethren, in which they had both been raised. He practised as a vet for many years while building a second career in psychotherapy. His son, now Professor of Veterinary Cardiology at the Royal College, succeeded him in veterinary science.
Having retrained first through the Marriage Guidance Council (now Relate) and then at the Institute of Group Analysis, in London, he qualified as a psychotherapist in 1975. He went on to become the IGA’s chairman and was the only person to hold both that office and later that of president of the Group Analytic Society, whose membership he helped extend throughout Europe.
Bryan helped lay the foundations for the UK Council for Psychotherapy as the first chair of its analytical psychotherapy section; and for the European Group Analytic Training Institutes Network (EGATIN). Travelling widely, often accompanied by Janet, he contributed to the development of psychotherapy training institutes in Bristol, Exeter, London, and Turvey (Northamptonshire) as well as Denmark, Israel and Norway.
He published little, avoiding the academics of his discipline by what he described as elective anorexia bibliosa - against the surfeit of books and journals. Among the qualities for which he is most remembered are his integrity and inclusiveness; his warmth, patience, sensitivity and modesty; and his sense of humour, which helped people get through difficult situations.
He retired in 2004, settling with Janet in Devon where his daughters lived. There, his interests included bell-ringing, choral singing and lecturing on the physics of tides. Towards the end of his life he reached out to those he knew would be affected – his family, his successors in the field and congregants in his church.
Bryan’s commitment to his family was absolute. He is survived by Janet, their children Helen, Judith and Adrian, eight grandchildren and a great-grandson.