The Work Of Clifford Yorke

Abstract: Clifford York was one of the leading Freudians of his generation. As Anna Freud’s close colleague, he was also one of the last remaining links to the theoretical and clinical tradition set by her father, Sigmund Freud. Clifford Yorke was a prolific writer and played a very active role in the scientific life of both the British Society of Psychoanalysis and the Anna Freud Centre. The Anna Freud Centre was the foremost international centre for training to work psychoanalytically with children in the Freudian tradition. Clifford Yorke belonged to the tradition not just by training but by temperament. To be a psychoanalyst, as Freud saw it, required more than a knowledge of science. Unless the psychoanalyst is at home with literature, the arts and mythology, for example, he or she will not be able to make sense of much that patients bring to their analyses. He was a leading psychoanalyst and close associate of Anna Freud. I would like to comment mostly on three aspects of his work: his knowledge and use of Anna Freud’s Diagnostic profile, his work with alcoholics and drug addicts, and his use of metapsychology.