Mary Hepworth

Mary Hepworth PhD (formerly Mary Target) is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychoanalysis at UCL.

Mary set up and ran the MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytic Studies in the Unit for 20 years 1996-2016. She is now part-time, and continues to teach and supervise UCL students on this Masters programme, and the PhD programme. She is primary supervisor to three PhD students, and has supervised 26 successfully completed PhDs. Her current PhD students are carrying out research on: the subjective meaning of anorexia nervosa to children who are chronic sufferers, and to their parents; children's experience of parents’ divorce; and psychoanalytic theories and clinical attitudes to homosexuality. Her own research focuses on social and emotional development and attachment, personality functioning in adulthood, the process and outcome of psychotherapies for children, adults and couples, and qualitative research on the experience of illness.

Mary is a Fellow of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, of which she was Honorary Secretary to the Board and Council 2012-4. Previous positions within the Society have included chairing the Research Committee and the Universities Liaison Committee, and being Hon Sec of the Curriculum Committee. She serves at present on the Student Progress Committee. She teaches seminar series on clinical writing and psychoanalytic research to candidates in training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Mary was Professional Director from 2003 to 2013 of the Anna Freud Centre, now the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. During that period the Centre sponsored the establishment of an alternative provision free school, The Pears Family Charitable Foundation School (The Family School for short), and Mary chaired the Governing Body 2015-19.

Mary was founding Chair of the Working Party on Psychoanalytic Education for the European Psychoanalytic Federation, 2001-4, and chaired the Psychotherapy Section of the British Psychological Society 2005-8, with membership of the Representative Council and Research Boards. She is a member of the Research Committee and Research Training Programme of the International Psychoanalytic Association. She has served as External Consultant for the analytic training at the Society of Analytical Psychology, and External Examiner for the psychoanalytic training at the British Psychoanalytic Association and for the psychotherapy training at the Society of Analytical Psychology. She served on the Future Strategy Working Group of the British Psychoanalytic Council.

Mary is Joint Series Editor of the Karnac Series in Psychoanalysis, and of the Yale Series on Developmental Science and Psychoanalysis, and she is a member of the Editorial Boards of the New Library of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

Mary has been honoured by visiting professorships at the University of Rome and the University of Vienna. She has international academic collaborations with colleagues at Yale University, New Haven, and the Université Laval, Quebec. She jointly leads training courses with Prof Alessandra Lemma and Prof Peter Fonagy in Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy, and supervises practitioners in this approach.

As a committed clinician for forty years, Mary has training and experience in cognitive behaviour therapy and family therapy as well as in psychoanalytic approaches, and has developed and evaluated short and medium-term therapeutic modalities most relevant within public mental health services. Since 1997 she has maintained a private adult psychoanalytic and psychotherapy practice.