J. W. T. Redfearn

Joseph William Thorpe Redfearn (1921 – 9 June 2011) was an English army officer, medical physiologist, psychiatrist and analytical psychotherapist and writer.

Early life Joseph W. T. Redfearn, commonly known as "Joe".

Career After resigning his army commission in 1952 he spent five years at the clinical psychiatry research unit of Graylingwell Hospital, West Sussex, where along with Olof Lippold and others, he researched depersonalization states and evoked critical potentials in animals, including humans and contributed to numerous scientific papers.

At the invitation of Sir Aubrey Lewis he applied for and gained a post at the Maudsley Hospital in South London where he became a consultant psychotherapist.

His much cited papers published in various journals reflect his enduring concern with the nature of the Self and with the body and his concept of 'subpersonalities'. He greatly expanded these and other concerns in two seminal volumes, My Self, My Many Selves and The Exploding Self, a book whose theme could have been expanded into further volumes. It was intended as a pluralist professional programme to foster independence of clinical thought and practice. Redfearn and Bosanquet remained however members of the SAP.

Family life In 1954 Redfearn married secondly Susan Joy Sainsbury, a theatre sister. Their marriage produced six children and lasted 53 years, until Susan's death in 2007. Redfearn died 9 June 2011, aged 90.

Publications Among Redfearn's written work are: "The patient's experience of his 'Mind'." Journal of Analytical Psychology. 11, 1-20. 1965 "The captive, the treasure, the hero and the 'anal' stage of development." J. Analyt. Psychol. 24, 185-205. 1979 "When are things persons and persons things?" J. Analyt. Psychol. 27, 215-238. 1982 My Self, My Many Selves Academic Press. 1985 The Exploding Self: The Creative and Destructive Nucleus of the Personality Chiron. 1992