David Stafford-Clark

David Stafford-Clark (17 April 1916—1999) was an English psychiatrist and author. He was educated at Felsted and University of London.

Stafford-Clark did war service in charge of Waterbeach hospital, Cambridgeshire at the home of RAF Bomber Command. He was mentioned in dispatches twice as a result of taking part in raids. He worked hard to change the prevalent public opinion that airmen were naturally suave, fearless men; he portrayed them as war-battered men pushed beyond the limits of human exhaustion.

In 1954 he was appointed director and head of psychological medicine at the York Clinic, with a consultancy at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital until ill-health forced his retirement in 1974.

He demonstrated his capability as a forensic psychiatrist when he testified for the defence in the much-publicised murder trial of Gunther Podola, who sought to evade his trial on the grounds of amnesia, and later in the case of the banned novel Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence.

He gave a number of lectures such as the Robert Waley Cohen series, on 'Psychology of Prejudice; Christians & Jews' in 1960 and St. Andrews University's twelve Gifford lectures in 1976.

His bestselling book Psychiatry Today (1951) was followed by numerous other titles including Psychology for Students (1964) which had seven reprints; these two named volumes are widely regarded as standard texts for all University psychology courses. He also wrote What Freud really said (1965), another best-seller that introduced generations of readers to Sigmund Freud with clarity and wit.

His son Max Stafford-Clark is a prominent theatre director.

References

• Henry R. Rollin, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

External links

• Works by or about David Stafford-Clark in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Persondata
Name	Stafford-Clark, David
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Date of birth	17 April 1916
Place of birth
Date of death	1999
Place of death