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OBITUARY |
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Peggy Dalton
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1932 - 2012 |
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 Peggy Dalton (née Butt) made an outstanding
contribution to PCP (Personal Construct Psychology) through the accessibility
of her writing, her commitment to practice-based teaching and supervision, and
her groundbreaking work on the psychological aspects of stammering in
partnership with Fay Fransella.
Peggy’s early career was in the theatre. She grew up
in London and her sister Pat tells of
childhood ‘concerts’ performed on the pavement for friends and passers-by.
Peggy’s interest in drama and literature was encouraged at grammar school and
her academic achievements led to the offer of an exhibition at St Hilda’s
College Oxford, where she studied English and joined the Oxford University
Dramatic Society, playing Imogen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline in her final year.
On graduation, Peggy began her career in repertory
theatre, travelling around the country performing in a wide variety of classic
and contemporary work. Her success led to the prestigious Old Vic Repertory
Company (soon to become Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre) where she played
alongside many of our greatest actors and joined the company’s celebrated tour
to America in 1958, making her probably the only personal construct
psychologist to have played opening nights on Broadway. The leading roles for
younger women that season were played by Judi Dench, and in addition to a
variety of roles in the ensemble, Peggy became her understudy. She would
entertain us years later with the tale of her youthful frustration at Judi’s
exceptionally robust health, but her time for leading roles did come and a deep
understanding of dramatic character permeated her work throughout her
life. She also spent some time with the
BBC repertory company performing in radio dramas and, to the delight of
friends, occasional roles in ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’, a leading radio soap of the
time. European PCP colleagues often commented on her beautiful ‘BBC voice’.
Her interest in speech and language, combined with the
uncertainty of theatrical life, prompted a career move, and Peggy qualified as
a speech & language therapist in 1966. Her interest in fluency and her
commitment to working collaboratively with colleagues and clients contributed
over time to the creation of the British Stammering Association which continues
to thrive, ‘run by people who stammer, for people who stammer’. She also
offered a drama group at the City Lit in London and it was there that she met
her husband, Bill. They married in 1970.
Through speech therapy she met Fay Fransella, and of
course Personal Construct Psychology, and she joined the first cohort of
diploma students at the newly created Centre for PCP in London. Later, Peggy
wrote about the experience of coming out of speech therapy training “expert in
the counting of stuttered-syllables-per-minute and able to tell an afferent
from an efferent aphasic a mile off”, describing a period when the introduction
of new equipment was leading to ever more complex and technical assessments (Dalton,
1988). Psychology had been part of the syllabus, but mainly as “rats in mazes and
cats in boxes”, plus the usual speedy world tour of the great names. “I knew
that what I had learned was not enough. I recognised that occasionally a deeper
understanding of the person I was working with seemed to enhance communication
between us and lead us to be more creative...there was a sense of development
from the experience on both sides. These occasions were too rare however and I
had no idea what made them special.” It was PCP which gave Peggy the clues she
was looking for: “It had something to do with being able to subsume the other
person’s approach to life to such an extent that this knowledge, rather than my
training, became the governing factor in what we did together. A paper (Dalton,
2007) written for Fay’s 80th birthday celebrations describes Peggy’s
introduction to PCP at the Centre, and, as well as working together on the
psychological construction of speech and language difficulties, Fay and
Peggy collaborated on a practice guide for
counsellors: “Personal Construct Counselling in Action” (Fransella &
Dalton, 1990).
A fellow student at the Centre, Gavin Dunnett, became
Peggy’s great friend and ‘accomplice’, and together they created one of the
most accessible and widely-read introductions to PCP: ‘A Psychology for Living’
(Dalton & Dunnett, 20052). The subtitle – ‘PCP for professionals
and clients’ – reflects their shared commitment to collaboration, and their
determination to practice according to George Kelly’s model as co-travellers
with their clients, rather than experts. Gavin’s early death in 1991 was a
great blow, and the writing of a second edition without him was a huge and
sometimes lonely task. As a writer, Peggy’s stance was that of a practitioner,
illustrating her points with case studies and cameos of her work with clients,
including her own experiences and anxieties, and writing in a style of friendly
inclusion, validating readers as co-explorers.
In 1983, her husband Bill experienced an illness which
led to permanent brain damage and severe memory loss, a shocking and
life-changing experience. This was the point at which PCP shifted from being
the way Peggy worked to the way that she lived. ‘A Psychology for Living’
includes a short section about how her chosen theory helped her to make sense
of Bill’s struggles to construe what was happening and to navigate their
radically changed role relationships. She would sometimes say, very sincerely,
that ‘PCP saved my life’, and the experience gave her the deepest possible
understanding of the challenges of change at core level. Bill continued to play
an active role in Peggy’s working world, answering the door and welcoming
callers, and there were many of them as Peggy was a Director and Administrator
for the PCP Association as well as seeing psychotherapy clients, supervising
students, and leading a supervision group. This combination of experiences led
in 1994 to the publication of her book ‘Counselling People with Communication
Problems’ (Dalton, 1994).
Peggy had herself been living with rheumatoid
arthritis for some years, and had made many necessary changes in daily living.
She construed these transitions with her typical mix of curiosity and humour,
writing several short pieces for the newsletter of the PCP Association. The
need for a wheelchair was a major change. Peggy wrote: “I looked to
establishing pleasant if passing relationships with small children and babies.
Not on your life. They stare at me coldly, then close their eyes and turn away.
Instead I find I am bum-height. I am thinking of a PhD along the lines of
‘Posteriors of the New Millennium: gender, class and ethnicity’.” Sharing her anxieties
and reflexive questions was always in the foreground, and that piece of writing
entitled ‘Reconstruing the Chiswick High Road’ ends with “The reconstruction of
that much-loved thoroughfare is of the second order: I simply look at it from a
different and lower angle. It’s the reconstruction of myself, however that has
really begun – goodness knows how I’ll end up.” (Dalton, 2006)
Soon after the great sadness of Bill’s death in 2006,
Peggy’s rheumatic ‘flare-ups’ increased in frequency and intensity, making teaching
and writing more of a challenge. She continued to inspire and astonish her
friends and colleagues with her resourcefulness and capacity for taking on
unwelcome changes and working with them creatively. Her lifelong interest in
drama and literature was still in the foreground as she experimented with
creative writing, and prepared her last published paper for Personal Construct Theory and Practice (Dalton,
2009). She would still lead a workshop occasionally, and, as her caseload
diminished, she built her material around characters from literature using a
cast from Dickens, Jane Austen and her beloved Shakespeare to prompt questions
about change and reconstruction, family and friendship, love, ageing and death.
Peggy managed the relentless constriction of her activities
with considerable flair, combining a determined independence with constant
ingenuity, improvising creative alterations to her living space and advertising
for and interviewing her own carers. Her lively curiosity and interest in the
work and lives of others never diminished, her usual response to the opening
‘how are you?’ being “oh I’ve been better, but tell me, how are you, and what’s
been happening?” Her connection to world events and particularly arts and
culture were maintained by her constant connection to BBC Radio 4 and the World
Service, and there was little that would not capture her lively interest. A
sudden deterioration in her condition led to her final brief hospital
admission. She had never fully retired, and her supervision group were awaiting
her return from hospital to set new dates. She died on 8th November 2012.
REFERENCES
Dalton,
P. ( 1988). Personal
Construct Psychology and speech therapy in Britain: a time of transition, in G. Dunnett (Ed.), Working
with people, London: Routledge
(pp. 64-67)
Dalton, P., (1994). Counselling people with
communication problems, London: Sage
Dalton, P. (2006). Reconstruing the Chiswick High
road, unpublished paper
Dalton, P. (2007). When I first
met Fay Fransella I first
met George Kelly. Personal
Construct Theory & Practice, 4, 9-10
Dalton, P. (2009). Literature and psychological
intervention. Personal
Construct Theory & Practice, 6, 82-89
Dalton, P. & Dunnett, G. (2005). A psychology for
living, London: Wiley (2nd edition).
Fransella,
F. & Dalton, P. (1990). Personal construct counselling in action,
London: Sage
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Mary Frances,
Leamington Spa (UK)
December 2012
Correspondence address: mary.frances@virgin.net
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REFERENCE
Frances, M. (2012).
Peggy Dalton - 1932-2012
Personal Construct Theory &
Practice, 9, 42-44.
(Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp12/frances-dalton12.html)
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Received: 27 December 2012 – Accepted: 27 December 2012 –
Published: 28 December 2012
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