Many of the interests of the eminent psychoanalyst William Gillespie, who died on June 30th aged 95, were encompassed in his book of selected writings, Life, Sex And Death (1995). He also made significant contributions to the forums of the psychoanalytical world as an administrator and facilitator.
Small in stature, neat and composed, he had about him an air of quiet authority, determination and dignity. Though reserved, when addressing an audience he could sparkle with a clarity of thought and sharp wit, never hurtful but pithy and to the point.
His family came from Newry, Co Down, and he always considered himself an Irishman. His parents were clinical missionaries of the Presbyterian Church, and he was born in Pei-Tai-Ho, China. Although his mother had aristocratic connections, modesty was a feature of the family culture, together with courage, fairness, integrity and a love of truth.
William Gillespie and his three older sisters were brought up in China, England and Northern Ireland, and eventually went to Edinburgh, where he studied at George Watson's College, while their father returned to China. There, when William Gillespie was 15, his father was murdered by intruders.
Feeling that God had failed him, he abandoned religion and turned to medicine. His family was now quite poor, but, by winning scholarships, bursaries and prizes, including the British Medical Association clinical essay prize, he made his way through Edinburgh University and medical school, winning degrees in medicine and surgery in 1929.
Two years later, he went to Vienna University on a scholarship, ostensibly to study psychiatry, but really to learn more about psychoanalysis. He relished the city's cosmopolitan, cultivated atmosphere, and had some analysis with Edmund Hirschmann, one of Freud's oldest adherents.
On returning to Britain, and deciding to become a psychoanalyst, William Gillespie obtained a post at a London mental hospital which housed patients with senile dementia, and started his training analysis with Ella Sharpe, an analyst with considerable literary interests. Characteristically, he also used his mental hospital experience to good effect by obtaining his MD in 1934 with a thesis on the psycho-pathology of senile dementia, a subject that provided some of the groundwork for his later psychoanalytic papers on ageing and death.
In 1935, he joined the staff of the Maudsley Hospital, in south London, the mecca of British psychiatry. In 1936, he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians - he became a fellow in 1962 - and qualified as a psychoanalyst in 1937. Shortly afterwards, he wrote the first of a series of papers on the psychopathology of sexual perversions, refining and expanding Frued's original contributions by further understanding of the relationship between sexuality and aggression, together with the importance of the super-ego.
In the 4arly 1940s, the British Society held a series of meetings, known as its "controversial discussions". The followers of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein presented their differing viewpoints on fundamental psychoanalytical observations and theories, with a mainly British middle grouping holding the balance between the two sides.
William Gillespie emerged as a fair-minded, diplomatic person trusted by all sides. In 1950, aged 45, he was elected the youngest-ever president of the British Psychoanalytical Society.
He now became active in the international arena and, in 1957, was elected president of the International Psychoalalytical Association.
He chose as his honorary secretary a like-minded colleague, Pearl King, and they initiated extensive revisions of the IPA's statutes, helping to resolve organisational problems in both France and the United States. Following his presidency, which ended in 1961, he was elected as IPA vice-president for a further 12 years, until he declined to stand again for office.
In 1971, he was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and retired from his Maudsley appointment, becoming emeritus physician. In 1976, he was appointed to the one-year visiting chair as Freud memorial professor of psychoanalysis at University College London, a post he held while continuing to lecture and write, developing the theme of female sexuality with a reassessment of concepts of the vaginal orgasm and Freud's views on female sexuality.
In another series of papers, he examined the concepts of aggression and instinct theory, with particular reference to Freud's theory of the death instinct and its relationship to dying.
He was also one of the few psychoanalysts,to write on parapsychological phenomena in relation to extrasensory perception.
In his last years, blindness prevented William Gillespie from indulging in his beloved reading, but audio books and his love of music provided solace for him.
He is survived by wife, Sadie, and two children from a previous marriage.
Harold Stewart William Hewitt Gillespie: born 1905; died, June 2001