Renata Symonds

Renata Symonds worked as a psychotherapist in London, and served part-time at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation (WPF), founded in the 1970s.

Renata Israel came to England in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution. She was born in Cologne, Germany and educated locally. On her arrival in London, she became an au pair and a nursery nurse.

She moved in the 1950s into doing remedial work with maladjusted children, and then into psychotherapy. She built up experience in this discipline through a formidable caseload of clients. She was almost obsessively attached to Carl Jung.

Jewish by birth and upbringing, she attended synagogue, but was confirmed very late in her life as an Anglican in the Westminster diocese. One of her interests was the study of dreams. She wrote a book on the midlife crisis, but it was never published.

Family
She was married for more than fifty years to the dramatist, novelist and poet John Symonds (1914 - 2006). Totally different personalities, they both worked from home, each in a room of their own - and sustained their marriage across half a century.

She died in 2007, aged 93, and is survived by two sons, Thomas Symonds, a publisher, and Gabriel Symonds, a physician.

Links

 * Renata Symonds' obit in The Guardian
 * John Symonds' obit in the UK Telegraph