Josephine Klein
Born 17/10/1926 – died 13/11/2018
Born in Dusseldorf to secular Jewish parents, a German father and a Dutch mother,
The family lived in Amsterdam, from which they escaped by boat 4 days after the Nazi invasion. They settled in Chester where Josephine attended Queens’ school. Josephine won a scholarship to study at London University where she took two courses simultaneously, gaining a BA in French at University College and a 1st class in Sociology at LSE.
She gained her Ph.D at Birmingham University, and became a social studies lecturer there from 1949 to 1962. She was a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, for 3 years, and subsequently a Reader in Social Relations at Sussex University for 5 years until 1970. She founded a ground-breaking course on youth and community work at Goldsmiths’College, and worked as course director for the next 4 years.
She published several books: The study of groups and working with groups, offered a practical guide in youth and community work and in psychotherapy. A later book, Samples from English Cultures analysed post-war social changes and the upbringing of children. While living in Brighton in the mid 1960’s, she set up the Archway Venture for the support and shelter of young people, and later to people escaping physical and sexual abuse.
In the early 1970’s she trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and produced more books: Our Need for Others and its roots in infancy (1987); Doubts and Certainties in the Practice of Psychotherapy; (19995) and in 2003, Jacob’s Ladder: An Approach to Mysticism.
These books synthesised approaches previously regarded as incompatible, introducing new ways of working with patients, and helping practitioners better understand their needs. She broke new ground in working with youth and communities.
Josephine lived in an 18th century house near Waterloo Station, from where she continued her private practice, as well as training psychotherapists and supervising trainees after her retirement.
Josephine never married, and never felt the instinct to have children. No doubt her work with young people replaced this need, whilst her early experience escaping from Nazi occupied territory with her family, shaped and motivated her passion for social justice and her career as a researcher, a writer and a psychotherapist. She enjoyed listening to baroque music, for relaxation after work.
She is survived by two nieces and a nephew.
Annie Hershkowitz