Michael Fordham

This collection includes material which has not yet been catalogued. Additions to an archive are referred to as 'accruals'. A summary of the uncatalogued materials in this collection is provided under 'Accruals'.

A. Personal and biographical material

B. Published and unpublished writing

C. C. G. Jung

C.1 Correspondence of MF and FF with C. G. and Emma Jung

C.2 Editing the Collected Works

C.3 'Jungiana'

D. Society of Analytical Psychology

D.1 SAP general

D.2 Child Analysis Training

E. Organisations, institutions, journals

F. Correspondence with colleagues

F.1 Individuals

F.2 Grouped correspondence

G. Infant Observation

H. Reference materials by others

J. Materials relating to Michael Fordham from friends and colleagues

Some apparent anomalies and inconsistencies of filing were corrected.

Michael Scott Montague Fordham:

4 Aug 1905 born in Kensington, London, of Montague Edward Fordham and his wife Sara Gertrude (nee Worthington)

1918 Greshams School, Holt

1924 Trinity College Cambridge

1927 St Bartholomew's Hospital

1928 Marries Molly Swabey

1931 MB BCh

1932 MRCP

Junior Medical Officer, Long Grove Mental Hospital Epsom

1933 Birth of Max Fordham

Begins to read Jung

1934 Fellowship in Child Psychiatry, London Child Guidance Clinic

Enters analysis with H. G. Baynes

Begins reading Melanie Klein

Goes to Zurich to meet Jung with a view to entering training there: plan falls through

Spends a year as a GP in Barking at Baynes's suggestion

1936 Sees Jung again in London, ends his analysis with Baynes, goes into analysis with Hilde Kirsch

Meets Frieda Hoyle when she comes to the Child Guidance Clinic to train as a psychiatric social worker

Takes part-time consultant post at child guidance clinic in Nottingham, and Frieda Hoyle is appointed psychiatric social worker

1940 First marriage dissolved; marries Frieda Hoyle

1942 Consultant post to help evacuee children in hostels in the Nottingham area

1943 Michael Fordham and Frieda Fordham return to London to help set up a proposed training centre for analytical psychology

1944 Publishes The Life of Childhood

1945 Appointed co-editor of the translation of C. G. Jung's Collected Works

1946 Instrumental in launching the Society of Analytical Psychology in London

Appointed consultant to the Child Guidance Clinic at the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases

1947 MD

1955 Becomes first editor of Journal of Analytical Psychology

1957 Publishes New Developments in Analytical Psychology

1958 Publishes The Objective Psyche

1969 Published Children as Individuals (revised version of The Life of Childhood)

1970 Resigns editorship of Journal of Analytical Psychology

1971 Founder Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry

1976 Publishes The Self and Autism

1977 Frieda Fordham begins to suffer from a number of ailments, including corneal ulcers leading to blindness

late 1970s Begins work with the Tavistock Clinic on mother-child observations

1984 Enters analysis with Donald Melzter, a Kleinian

1987 Death of Frieda

14 Apr 1995 Death of Michael Fordham

Further biographical details in Michael Fordham's The Making of an Analyst: a memoir (London: Free Association Books, 1993), and see obituaries etc in PP/FOR/A.8/5

Frieda Fordham:

Born Winefride Rothwell on 23 Feb 1903. She first pursued a career as a dancer, but in 1920 married Percy Campbell Hoyle, by whom she had two sons. Following the end of this marriage, she studied at the London School of Economics and trained as a psychiatric social worker. Working in that capacity at the London Child Guidance Clinic, she met Michael Fordham, whom she married in 1940. She later trained as an analytical psychotherapist. Her publications included the much reprinted (and translated into several languages) An Introduction to Jung's Psychology (Penguin, 1953), widely regarded as a classic text on this subject. She was also responsible for the famous opening words of the BBC radio programme 'Listen with Mother' - 'Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin'. After a decade of increasing ill-health, she died on 7 Jan 1988.

Further details can be found in obituaries in The Times, 18 Jan 1988, and The Independent, 21 Jan 1988.