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Stevens, Y. 2024. Tribute to Louise Yorke. Reformulation, Winter, p.18-21.
ACAT would like to share with members and friends the very sad news that Louise Yorke passed away in late March and we would like to share this tribute with you.
Our love, thoughts and sincere condolences are with her family and friends at this time. Louise’s family offered this message for Louise’s colleagues along with a donation of £250 to the Tony Ryle Bursary Fund.
‘To us, as a family, the loss of Louise is unbearable. Louise was a private person. She never sought to be in the limelight. She just was the limelight. We are so proud of her, of everything she was and everything she achieved in her life; for her passion for her profession, her integrity, her strength, her fortitude in adversity, her determination and tenacity, her wisdom, her compassion, her generosity, her humour and sense of fun, and the love she had and showed so freely.
Louise was an active member of ACAT, including occasional research and editing of the ACAT Reformulation journal some years ago. She had many friends in the ACAT community, and she will be pleased that this donation is helping future therapist discover ACAT.’
Louise was a much-treasured colleague in the Southwest CAT community and will be irreplaceable. Her intelligence, sense of humour and passionate energy marked her out as an exceptional clinician, teacher, supervisor, editor, writer, innovator and, above all, a highly valued CAT colleague and friend. Louise will be very greatly missed.
Louise’s colleagues in Devon came together to support each other with the loss of our dear colleague. It will take us time to come to terms with her not being with us. Louise has left precious memories with us in all that she taught, supervised and shared of her passion for CAT and more recently her Inner Child work that some of you may be familiar with. Trainees have expressed their gratitude to have been taught by Louise. “She was always unapologetically expressive about her feelings, and I had not encountered anyone quite like her before in training. It felt like she gave me permission to truly embrace my own emotions.” “I am grateful for the Inner Child model and the generous guidance and time she gave to me, while also being a role model for compassion for our clients and ourselves. Making us realise that as therapists our willingness to engage and lean into emotions can be a powerful first step, to engage with our clients and use this as a tool for catalysing change through compassion for clients.”
I take some comfort in being able to let you know of tangible legacies of Louise's thoughts and practice in current CAT publications. Louise has a contribution entitled: Observing Eye: The ace in the pack, in Julie Lloyd's chapter (Chapter 9: Revision) in the newly published Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Analytic Therapy, 2024 available in hardback and online. In addition, Louise has an article in the previous edition of Reformulation, again on the "Observing Eye". We can remember Louise every time we add an observing eye to our CAT maps.
Louise has written a definitive chapter on her innovative adaptation to CAT on Relational Dialogues with the Inner Child in the book I am editing on creativity in CAT. This book is part of the Pavilion series of books on Developments in CAT with series editors Ian Kerr and Steve Potter. I hope this will be published quite soon.
We can remember Louise in our practice of Metta Bhavana (Loving Kindness Meditation) - a guide to which Louise often added to the end of her emails; and in our practice of CAT, and for sharing the genius of Ryle's model with others - and for those of you newer to the model, to work through your cases and become inspiring supervisors and trainers yourselves.
This is Louise’s introduction to her book chapter:
The first door that opened onto the world of the inner child was in the house where I lived. Like many children, I felt somewhat mystified by the world and my role in it. At some point, another door opened and in walked Dibs (Axline, 1964). In real life, Dibs was a troubled five-year-old boy. After a year of play therapy, where his feelings and family relationships were explored, a door opened that enabled Dibs to achieve his potential. Axline had recognised that when he was given ‘what was needed’, namely, a new way of relating involving noticing, exploring, connecting and recognising, Dibs was able to express his feelings and interact socially. Years later, still reflecting on life’s mysteries, I walked through another door, holding the scroll of a doctoral psychologist. Having learnt of the link between childhood and adult development, I should not have been surprised by whom I met on stepping inside the clinic room. There, albeit in another guise, in another story, in the lives and relationships of others was Dibs. And so it was that the child’s needs for healthy relationships led me to CAT and to develop within it a relational approach to working with the inner child.
These are tributes from Louise’s colleagues:
I feel humbled at having been asked to contribute to this eulogy for Louise, at such a sad and difficult time.
I first met Louise on the Somerset Practitioner Training in 2012. I was struck by her warm, vibrant presence, along with her never to be forgotten sense of humour and power of engagement. All this made her such a delight to teach and be with. It was clear to me that Louise would be an enormous asset to the CAT community.
Friends and colleagues have shared with me their sense of her profoundly passionate nature, which so often shone through – even when she was feeling frustrated or held back by those who could not share her vision. I supervised her for a time, which brought me closer to the passionate, caring, humane and gifted clinician she was, whilst also opening a door on the vulnerable and hurt Louise, who sometimes endured moral injury from systemically demanding organisational frameworks.
From my work alongside her in Devon Partnership, and on the psychology doctorate in Exeter, I was fortunate to get to know her a little more personally, and in the context of our sudden loss, it feels important to acknowledge and appreciate that she was, I guess like all of us, a very nuanced, caring, and varied personality, who in many ways I think, was quite a private person. In that respect, it’s felt hard finding these words, and putting them together, as it’s left me feeling so very sad. My last, and what feels all too recent, contact with her was of congratulating her on being appointed to as Strategic Lead in Devon Partnership. Her response, that ‘this role could be so exciting’ feels now so desperately tragic, and I am left for now, like many others, with feelings of loss and emptiness that are hard to manage.
Jay Dudley
CAT Psychotherapist & Supervisor
Former Chair of ACAT
My journey with CAT started with Louise. When she joined as lead for my service, she brought her passion and wisdom, qualities that have continued to support me though out this journey. Louise has provided inspiration to me and to many others. She had a strong vision for a psychological service and how it could be pivotal to bring about change within organisations driven by medical ideologies of mental health. She continued to push for changes with strength and determination. CAT sat firmly at the heart of her vision with its relational stance providing the agent of change.
Louise's passion for CAT was infectious. She helped shape and develop career choices and paths for many, including my own. Her work as a supervisor and trainer was where she shone and where she felt most comfortable. This I am sure is how she would want to be remembered. She encouraged confidence, reminding you that you could do things, that you did know how and to just 'give it a go'. Her ability to share her emotions as a professional and her humanity was very much part of how she worked as a therapist, an ability to care and to be vulnerable. She is greatly missed.
Sarah Noakes
Principle Forensic Psychologist& CAT Therapist
‘Goodbye dear Louise. I will miss your incredible mind, your infectious sense of humour and your warm support.’
Jason Hepple
CAT Psychotherapist and Trainer
Goodbye letter to Louise
Dear Louise,
You were right when you said that the ending brings up feelings of abandonment from past losses. I have recently found myself dreaming about the loss of my grandfather, another figure in my life who, much like you, had a deep impact on the person that I am today. Your voice sits alongside his and has changed me in ways that extend far beyond the reaches of the public realms of work, into the personal, as internalised healthy patterns of relating- valuing-valued, protecting-safe, loving-loved.
Your supervision felt like an act of protection, in which I could grow my own voice, make brave choices, feel secure, whilst remaining connected to my humanity. You had a unique ability to bring creativity and playfulness into therapy work that often delved into dark places, and you were able to embody and recognise the mystical elements of the therapeutic process with scientific precision. You held your own emotionality and vulnerability up like a dazzling sun; I think that sometimes the intensity of this could feel terrifying for those who feared meeting the mirror of their own vulnerability. Concepts such as love, creativity, the unmet needs of the inner child, can so often be avoided within clinical settings, but you were able to pull it into the very core of therapy, and you held that space with an iron will.
From you I learned that no problem is too complex if only you can view it through the lens of CAT. Your belief was that no one is too hard to engage or too much; everyone would benefit from CAT. This was such a powerful leading force within a context of pressured waiting lists, closing doors and services raising their drawbridges. I wondered sometimes if you would become crushed by your own idealism, but then, why shouldn’t we be ideal, strive to be better, consistently challenge ourselves? If I take anything from our time together, it’s to hold onto the belief that I and others can be better through connection, and that relational thinking can map the way forward. I promise, like you, to never shut the door on others, but to keep holding it open- to create as many opportunities for others as I can. This is what you did for me, this is what I learned from you.
I think at this time you’d ask, just like you always did, what would my inner child need to hear from you? If I could climb into the picture of us sat side by side, you, the supervisor, the carer, the parent; and me, the supervisee, the cared for, the child, how would we say goodbye?
I’d say “it’s painful that you’re going, I wanted it to be longer.” And you’d say “It’s hard to say goodbye, but for as long as you remember me, I’ll still be with you”.
I’d say: “I want you to know that I really loved you”, and you’d reply: “yes I know, I loved you too.”
And that’s how we’d say goodbye.
Jennifer Simmons Clinical Psychologist & CAT Therapist
ACAT will be organising a Louise Yorke CPD event in the autumn, focused on therapist well-being and the creativity that imbued Louise’s work.
Yvonne Stevens, June 2024