Patrick De Mare

Dr Patrick De Maré was born in London in 1916, of Swedish parentage. He was educated at Wellington, Cambridge, and St George's Hospital. He qualified as a doctor in 1941 and enlisted in the RAMC in 1942, when he was trained for Army psychiatry by Rickman and Wilfred Bion at Northfield Hospital. He ran an Exhaustion Centre throughout the European campaign, at the end of which he returned to Northfield Hospital, where he joined S. H. Foulkes and Tom Main in the Northfield experiment.

After the war he became a Consultant Psychotherapist at St George's Hospital; in 1952 he set up the Group Analytic Society with Foulkes, and later he participated in setting up the Institute of Group Analysis and the Group Analytic Practice. He also worked with Benaim and Lionel Kreeger at Halliwick Hospital, the short-lived therapeutic community.

In 1972 he published Perspectives in Group Psychotherapy ( Allen & Unwin) and in 1974 Lionel Kreeger and he published Introduction to Group Treatment in Psychiatry ( Butterworth), which was dedicated to the patients and staff at Halliwick Hospital.

In 1975 he started a large group under the auspices of the Institute of Group Analysis; in 1976 he was joined by Robin Piper. That 'large' group settled down to a steady membership of about 20 members and became a 'median' group. In 1984 he launched a weekly seminar on large groups that, in 1986, became part of a recognised large group section of the Group Analytic Society.

Dr Patrick De Mare devoted his skills to the practice of group psychotherapy, starting in the traditional small group psychotherapeutic setting, but progressing towards the experience and application of large groups, and later still developing his main interest of the median group.