Dorothy Rowe Obituary

Dorothy Rowe was a pioneer in the field of psychology, known for her ability to bridge the gap between the clinical world and the general public. Her career was focused on listening to patients with mental illness rather than simply treating them as problems to be solved with medication and electroconvulsive therapy. Dorothy believed that depression was not just an illness, but a crisis of meaning that could be addressed by rethinking the ideas that underpinned it. She challenged the use of drugs such as Prozac, advocating for a more individualized approach to mental health treatment.

Dorothy was well-known for her opposition to religion, particularly Christianity, which she believed offered a false sense of moral superiority and contributed to feelings of guilt and distress. She argued that many people’s mental distress stemmed from a need for certainty and security that religions such as Christianity purported to offer. Specifically, the "just world theory" of religion, which posits that bad actions are punished and good actions are rewarded, led to feelings of distress.

While Dorothy’s work was highly regarded by those who read her books, she never became a bestselling author due to the complexity of her ideas. Her messages were not simple or cheerful, and often challenged deeply-held notions of self. However, she offered a solution to the difficulties of life that was backed by clinical research – the degree of suffering one experiences from negative events is directly related to the meaning one attaches to those events. This idea, combined with her incorporation of Buddhist teachings, felt fresh and innovative at the time of her writing.

Growing up in Australia, Dorothy had a difficult childhood marked by her mother’s depression and neglect. This likely contributed to her interest in mental health and her drive to offer more personalized treatment options. Despite never achieving widespread popularity, Dorothy’s impact on the field of psychology was significant and enduring.

Dorothy found employment with the NHS at Whiteley Wood clinic situated in Sheffield, where she commenced her study of the biological foundations of mood disorders. However, as time progressed, she grew doubtful of the conventional "medical model" of mental illness, which viewed mental afflictions as stemming from physical causes, and instead opted for the personal construct theory conceptualized by George Kelly.

In 1971, she obtained her Ph.D. and established the Department of Clinical Psychology within the Lincolnshire Health Authority the following year. Her investigations into mood disorders became the basis of her debut publication, The Experience of Depression (1978), later retitled as Choosing Not Losing, followed by The Construction of Life and Death (1982), ultimately renamed as The Courage to Live. In 1975, an unplanned discussion with the manager of a health food store resulted in the publication of Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison the following year, which garnered the Mind book of the year award in 1984.

Dorothy would go on to publish numerous other works and write several journalistic pieces, but all eventually circled back to her primary hypothesis that the world was shaped more by the meanings we design for ourselves than by people and events. After coming across her writing in the early 1990s while researching her book on depression, The Scent of Dried Roses, her message resonated with me profoundly and inspired me to read all of her works in quick succession.

However, Dorothy was more than merely a clinical psychologist and author. She was renowned as one of the six wisest people in Britain by Saga magazine, and she was acknowledged in a worldwide poll in 1997 as one of the top 100 geniuses globally, putting her on equal footing with Stan Lee, the comic book creator. The irony of sharing the same recognition as a world-class fantasist would have undoubtedly amused her.

Moreover, Dorothy was a fervent feminist, and a poster declaring, "A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle," welcomed me when I arrived at her apartment in Highbury, North London. She received commendations from influential women such as Fay Weldon, Nigella Lawson, and Linda Grant, with Weldon dubbing her as having qualities that placed her somewhere between saintliness and genius.

Nonetheless, Dorothy was not a knee-jerk feminist by any means, as she highlighted that women could "imprison" themselves without any male oppression, and questioned why more women faced depression than men, stating that women tended to set unattainable objectives for themselves. She adhered to a straightforward and candid philosophy, advocating for the truth about oneself and one’s surroundings, being audacious in exploring it, and confronting it head-on without any hesitation.

In 1986, she departed from the NHS and headed back to Sheffield, before relocating to London nine years later. In the twenty-first century, she worked as a visiting professor at universities such as the Middlesex, London Metropolitan, and Sunderland, until she opted for semi-retirement in Sydney, Australia, in 2015. She is survived by her son.