My friend and former colleague, Sally Berry, was a psychotherapist who spent many years engaged in two pioneering projects in London – at the Arbours Association, where she lived and worked with people with emotional difficulties, and at the Women’s Therapy Centre, where she provided counselling to women experiencing struggles in their personal lives.
Sally, who has died aged 85, began living and working at the Arbours Association in one of their homes in Crouch End, north London, in 1971, and eventually headed up one of the Arbours houses elsewhere in London while also serving as chair of its training committee, which oversaw the mentoring of therapists and residents alike.
In 1976 she also joined the Women’s Therapy Centre, where I was a co-founder with Luise Eichenbaum, as a one-day-a-week psychotherapist, juggling that role with her continued presence at the Arbours community and becoming the centre’s part-time clinical director in the late 1980s. The Women’s Therapy Centre closed in 2005 and she retired from the Arbours Association in 2018, after which she ran her own small private practice until 2021.
Born in Oklahoma City in the US, Sally was the daughter of Alma (nee Payne) and Max Berry, a broker for a grocery store. After attending Classen high school she gained a degree at the University of Oklahoma, followed by an MA in education at the University of Central Oklahoma.
She began work as a special needs teacher for the children of service personnel on US bases abroad, first in the Philippines, then in Wiesbaden, Germany, and finally at Lakenheath, Suffolk, in 1968. At Lakenheath she met fellow American Tom Ryan, a therapist at the base, who became her partner; they eventually married in 2006.
Subsequently Sally and Tom trained together as psychotherapists at the Arbours Association, while living in the Arbours home in Crouch End.
Both at Arbours and at the Women’s Therapy Centre Sally had an exceptional capacity for helping troubled people to manage their way through extreme difficulties. She was always thoughtful, subtle and nuanced, combining her exquisite clinical skills with personal warmth and an unmissable laugh. She was also a great influence in making Arbours and the Women’s Therapy Centre collegiate and inspiring places to work, to think, to theorise and to innovate.
Outside work Sally’s chief interest was her family. She also wrote poetry, was a voracious reader and had many friends.
She is survived by Tom, their daughters, Jessie and Alisa, grandchildren Ava, Sammy, Santi and Zak, and her brother Michael.
