Patrick De Mare

Who was Patrick De Mare?

Dr Patrick Baltzar de Maré was a consultant psychotherapist with a special interest in group psychotherapy. He has published several works on psychotherapy.

Pat De Mare was born in London, the son of B E A de Mare who was of Swedish origin. He was educated at St Cyprian's School, Wellington College and Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He trained for medicine at St George's Hospital and qualified as a doctor in 1941. He enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1942, and was trained for Army psychiatry by Rickman and Wilfred Bion at Northfield Hospital. It was an interesting time to work as a psychiatrist: the First World War had seen ground-breaking work in diagnosing and treating trauma, and with battle casualties arriving home, Dr De Mare had plenty of patients to look after and study. He ran an Exhaustion Centre throughout the European campaign, at the end of which he returned to Northfield Hospital, where he joined S. H. Foulkes and Tom Main in the Northfield experiment. Northfield became the centre of a series of experiments led by these eminent physicians, which studied how to deal with trauma caused by war.