Dr Ron Britton


We are very sad to learn of the death of our dear colleague, the pre-eminent psychoanalyst Dr Ron Britton, on 25 August 2025.

Ron was a Trustee of the Melanie Trust for many years, a former president of the British Psychoanalytical Society, vice president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and a recipient of the Sigourney Award. He was highly regarded as a supervisor, teacher and lecturer in many different parts of the world and his erudition and devotion to psychoanalysis remained undiminished.

His greatest legacy to us is the depth and lucidity of his analytic writing; Belief and Imagination (1998), Sex Death and the Superego (second edition, 2021) and Between Mind and Brain (2015). He was also the contributing editor of The Oedipus Complex Today (1989) and a recent book Forgiveness and Mental Health (2024), as well as a forthcoming book of his favourite literary papers.

Immensely creative and clear in his thinking, firmly rooted in the everyday clinical situation and steeped in a deep understanding of Freud, Klein and Bion, Ron was also able to engage with great literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, linguistics and neuroscience. By making links across these disparate disciplines he enriched psychoanalysis and opened new avenues of exploration. His longstanding friendship and dialogues with John Steiner and Michael Feldman enabled a particularly creative period in Kleinian psychoanalysis. 

Ron’s death is a profound personal and professional loss but we are fortunate to have his ideas and many papers which leave fertile ground for generations to come.   

Read more on the Melanie Trust website here.