David Armstrong (2nd September 1934 – 2nd May 2026)
David studied philosophy at Oxford and trained as a psychologist at Cambridge, going on to work in action research and organisational consultancy for over 60 years. His career took him from the Tavistock Institute to the Grubb Institute and then the Tavistock Consultancy Service, where he brought psychoanalytic insight to senior executives and executive teams across business, government, health, and education in the UK and worldwide.
David was a brilliant, incisive and lucid thinker in the field of socioanalysis, with profound insights into how psychoanalysis, groups, organisations and society can learn from one another. He drew inspiration from Bion’s thinking and built bridges where Bion had left his own ideas on groups open to further development. David has left us articles, lectures and seminars, podcasts, evidence of his innovative mind. *Organisation in the Mind: Psychoanalysis, Group Relations, and Organisational Consultancy* is perhaps his best-known book: an unmissable collection of essays published in 2005 and edited by Robert French. David was a profoundly generous, approachable and honest person, with a strong sense of ethics that was ever-present in his choices. He helped nurture a large number of younger professionals – and I am one of them, infinitely grateful for what he gave me in our exchanges. He was also one of the pillars of social dreaming and all its developments over the past forty years. He actively supported the training and development of SDiN, of which he was a Board member, with the passion of someone who wanted to contribute to an organisation founded and sustained by the principles of social dreaming. We owe him much and we shall miss him.
