The PCP community around
the globe is mourning the loss of Jacqui Costigan. This has especially
hit hard the Australasian group where Jacqui was a leader and mentor for
that group.
Jacqui was diagnosed
with cancer in late 2000, and was hospitalized in early February 2002.
“Many of us knew that she had health problems, although we (and I suspect
Jacqui) were not expecting that these would be fatal so soon,” said Beverly
Walker, editor of the Australian Personal Construct Network
Upon hearing the
news, many wrote to pay tribute. Writings to her family and friends
included the following…
Beverly
Walker, Australia:
Jacqui will be greatly
missed by the personal construct group in Australia. She has been
the linchpin in the Victorian group, holding regular meetings where personal
construct research was presented and methodology and theory discussed over
considerably more than a decade. She supported and encouraged a number
of students for their honours and postgraduate research. She has
been a member of the Australasian committee, always there to provide advice
and pitch in when needed. But above all we will miss her for her
generosity, kindness and loyalty to her many friends.
Julie
Watkinson, Australia:
I would like to
add my note of recognition of Jacqui's kindness and her influence on me
and my research. As a person interested in PCP who is not a psychologist
I found Jacqui to be an understanding and helpful person who made time
for responding to queries and giving support - since I first met her at
the Canberra conference. I am deeply saddened while very appreciative
of Beverly providing this news through the list. I have informed others
in or from South Australia who feel as I do.
Fay Fransella,
UK:
How very dreadful
that Jacqui should have her life so shortened. You will, I know miss
her personally as will many others. My thoughts are with you all.
Jon Raskin,
USA:
I was saddened to
hear of Jacqui Costigan’s passing. I did not know her that well,
but several times at PCP conferences she came up to offer me encouragement
and support. I always appreciated this. Please pass my on my
condolences.
John
M. Fisher, UK:
Could you pass both
Margueritte and my condolences to Jacqui’s family as well as condolences
from David Savage who I rang today with the sad news. Although we
didn’t know Jacqui as well as some (e.g., David) we enjoyed her company
at conferences and will miss her humour and friendly attitude. The
PCP community has suffered a sad day.
Greg
Neimeyer, USA:
…I am very sorry
for Jacqui’s loss, and I confess that it does not even seem real to me
yet. I recall my last conversation with her at the conference in
Australia, sitting down at the outdoor table in the sunshine, having a
drink (and, for Jacqui, a smoke). All of my memories are great ones,
including (perhaps especially) the ones that are not for public consumption!
She will be fondly remembered and greatly missed by an entire international
community of friends and colleagues, which I am proud to count myself among.
Gabriele
Chiari and Maria Laura Nuzzo, Italy:
On behalf of the
Italian colleagues and friends who knew Jacqui and, as a consequence of
this, loved her and appreciated her work, we share the Australasian Group’s
grief. We will miss you, Jacqui.
Maureen
Pope, UK:
…It is indeed very
sad news. May I add my personal appreciation for Jacqui’s contributions
and condolences to her family and her Australian colleagues.
Lluis
Botella, Spain:
I want to add my
voice to express my deepest condolences to Jacqui’s family and friends,
as well as my appreciation and admiration towards Jacqui. I had the
privelege of spending two weeks with her and her family in Melbourne after
the Townsville conference and I felt so welcome and taken care of as if
it was my own. This is certainly a great loss.
Bob Neimeyer,
USA:
To Jacqui’s Family—
Although I am stranger
to most of you, I was honored to call your mother (in-law), Jacqui Costigan,
my friend. When the news of her death reached me last week, half
way around the world, I felt a wave of sadness at the ending of a life
that had touched so many people, even continents away. So I wanted
to write you on behalf of those many people, from many countries, who will
carry in their hearts a warm and vivid picture of a woman whose kindness,
humor, and goodness made a deep impression. She will be missed by
those of us who feel in ourselves a little corner of the hollowness that
you must feel more fully and more intimately. But there is enough
of a thread of shared sadness that we feel connected to you in your loss.
Significantly, nearly
all of my memories of Jacqui are funny ones. I can’t recall the year
I first met her, but I believe it was in the late 80’s, when my trip to
Australia allowed me a visit to Melbourne, and gave me a chance to present
a paper to her students and colleagues at her invitation. I recall
her laughter from that trip, and her driving—perhaps not the steadiest,
but certainly among the most exciting I had known (how much of this was
a function of driving on the “wrong” side of the road for this then-innocent
American, I can’t say!). The memory of her irrepressible buoyancy
and optimism was rekindled at the ’93 PCP congress in Townsville, Qld,
where Jacqui took it as a personal cause to stir the rapidly cooling embers
of interest in the somewhat garish scarecrow-like PCP hats (!), styled
in a fashionable (?) black with orange boomerang lettering. As I
remember, she bought at least two of them, wore one relentlessly, and leading
by example prompted many reluctant consumers to lay down their American,
Canadian, or Kiwi dollars (or other world currencies) for a similarly suitable
souvenir (I stuck with a t-shirt). But my favorite memory of Jacqui
was after the conference, when my brother Greg, and I had the pleasure
of being her houseguests for a few days in Melbourne. This was in
the middle of your winter, and it was a blustery one indeed for these two
Southern boys, our blood thinned by decades of Memphis and Florida.
Huddling with Jacqui around the fire in the living room was cozy enough,
as long as we left on our coats and kept our blue fingers wrapped around
our mugs of tea, as we watched the waves of heat from the fire literally
ripple up the walls and out the open windows above our heads. But the trips
to the unheated loo (with another window wide open!) were not for the faint
hearted, and surviving the night in the bedroom (laying fully dressed under
the covers and assorted contents of our backpacks, with extra Tshirts pulled
over our heads) could have provided an appropriate plot for a short story
by Jack London! Jacqui, of course, was unphased, trotting about merrily
in her robe and slippers, spritely and effervescent as always.
Somehow, after doing
jumping jacks much of the night to keep our blood circulating, Greg and
I eventually fell into a deep and fitful sleep, waking after Jacqui had
gone to work. Returning home in the evening after sightseeing, we
burst out laughing to discover that the bedroom, heated above freezing
by our exertions of the night before, was now thoroughly ventilated once
more by the windows that had been thrown open all day by either Jacqui
or a housekeeper, concerned that we not breathe the “stale” air!
Characteristically, Jacqui shared in the hilarity as we swapped impressions
of the eccentricities of both your culture and our own.
To close on a serious
note, I am also aware of Jacqui’s published contributions to a theory group
she loved, of the great influence that she had on students, and of the
loyalty she inspired in her many friends. She truly embodied the
adventurous, playful spirit of the theory she loved, and that loved her
back. I feel enriched by having known her, and I hope that some of
the good things she stood for will live on in each of you.
Jacqui was a
key player in the Australian PCP community. She was a nurse as well
as a psychologist. Her research included examination of many features
of the analysis of repertory grids. Jacqui had also been a full member
of the Australasian PCP committee and was involved in the organizing of
the third Australasian conference in Melbourne as well as the 10th international
congress in Townsville. She is survived by her four children Jeremy,
Jacinta, Johanna, and Genevra, as well as four grandchildren.
With
excerpts from the Australian Personal Construct Newsletter, No. March 2002.
Jacqui Costigan
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