Di King

Died 24/5/2019

A Personal Tribute

Di and I met over 40 years ago. We were both teachers at different state comprehensive schools in Inner London.  I think, with an urge to get a better grasp of ourselves in the system we were both immersed in, we had both separately enrolled in a 2- year course broadly about “The Emotional Experience and Learning and Teaching” run on Thursday evenings at the Tavistock Institute in Swiss Cottage in North West London.

Di and her young daughter, Kath, were then living in a tall block of flats in Swiss cottage.

I was impressed by the tall, beautiful Diana before I even spoke to her. I still have an image of her in a large group on the course at the Tavistock asking “Is this appropriate?” when no-one else dared say a word.

It was on this course, run by an inspirational psychotherapist called Isca Salzberger- Wittenberg, that Di and both developed our interest in groups and individuals in groups.

When the course was over, we set up a small group of our own with some others who had been on the course, and we hired a consultant from the Tavistock to lead it so that we could go on discussing our work in schools and how the work related to group dynamics and ourselves.

Di met and married a farmer, Doug, and she and Kath moved down to the village of Grittleton in Wiltshire to live and work on his farm. I will never forget my early images of Di on my first visit to the farm ~ milking  what seemed to me enormously bulky black and white cows and riding her big black horse, Lucy, ~ such a contrast with her London life in a small flat in a high rise block. Nonetheless, she would regularly continue to drive up and down to London in her big black Saab.

We became immersed in the magic and mystery of how groups work ~ or don’t work ~ and ultimately we both left teaching and went on to train to be group analytic psychotherapists ~ though at different times in our lives and in different places. I don’t think I would have started my training without Di’s encouragement.

There was an intertwining of the personal and professional as Di and I grew together in our relationship. Whenever and wherever we met, we were always able to talk in depth about our personal lives and our work and how the two connected with or disturbed each other.

Di introduced me to the Greek island of Skyros where in her previous years she had relished the experience of being a member of a therapy group run by Ari Badaines, a Gestalt group therapist who used psychodrama in his groups. Di was a wonderful member of a therapy group ~ and of an experiential group. She always set a model for others by showing her vulnerability ~ which, of course, was also her strength. And she gave to others, using her remarkable insight into their mental and emotional lives. She always said every time she came back from her deep personal therapeutic work in Skyros, it informed her work as a practitioner.

With her sustained drives of self-reflection and self-improvement, Di also attended the creative writing groups at Skyros with the same level of self honesty and zeal to improve her writing…. and right up through her recent illness she had been an active and stalwart member of Malcolm Stern’s therapy groups.

Di was such a reliable confidante that many people did not know what a warm, empathic, outstanding therapist she was. Probably because she had been through so much emotionally during her own life, including the experience of being in the depths of black despair, and through all her own personal therapy, she was able to accompany her patients and clients in whatever they were going through. She always insisted that therapists could not take their clients or patients where they were not prepared to go. I know that Di has guided and supported hundreds and hundreds, probably closer to thousands, of people who have needed her help, both in groups and individually.

Di’s voice outside the therapy room was also authentic and strong. Her constant request, indeed challenge, in any group was to “get us out of our heads and into our feelings”. Some GASi members may recall being brought back to the present and reality by Di’s forthright words if they became overly theoretical. She did the same to me. Her feedback to me on some of my behaviour was perceptive, penetrating and sometimes painful as I became more self-aware of the impact of my behaviour on her. As good friends do, Di made me a better version of myself.  But she was also uniquely kind.

Di put her heart and soul, a deep commitment and huge level of competence into her 4 different careers: teacher, farmer, psychotherapist and writer; indeed, into everything she did.  As an adult, she conquered the dyslexia which had been undiagnosed in her early life.

We travelled together well ~ and many times to many countries ~ on holidays and to GASi conferences ~ all memorable, funny, stimulating experiences.

The last few lines of Brendan Kennelly’s poem “Begin” give me some comfort: I think Di could have written them:

“Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin”. 

Jacqueline Fogden