Goodbye and thank you to Dora Black
We were all very sad to learn that Dora Black, psychiatrist and family therapist, born 2 July 1932, died on 16 December 2021. Dora was a founder member of IFT and remained involved with our work ever since. Her continued challenge “but what about the children?” in situations where young people’s emotional needs were not being considered still rings loudly. She became an international expert in helping children where one parent, nearly always the father, had killed the other. Her work on trauma, and focus on work with bereaved children including her seminal and influential book When Father Kills Mother, was hugely important to family therapy as well as in the field of psychiatry. Dora attended many of our events, and rang me every so often to ask about our work and express her support for what we were doing. She last rang me in October to say that she liked both the new logo and how the building was looking. I am sorry she did not get to visit us, but her legacy lives on as we benefit from her work, and also from our connection with her close family friend, Marc Raven, whose presence on our board, where his knowledge and skill adds a great of support to IFT, is much appreciated.