Miller Mair, 1937-2011
Dr. Miller Mair died suddenly and unexpectedly on Thursday, June 9, 2011. His funeral will be held on Tuesday, June 14 at 2:30 at Roucan Loch Crematorium, Dumfries, Scotland. There will also be a memorial service at a later date.
Miller’s work inspired many people in the personal construct psychology community. CPN was honored to have him as a featured speaker and Lifetime Achievement Award recipient at its 2010 conference in Niagara Falls, New York. Miller’s keynote address, “Enchanting Psychology: The Poetry of Personal Inquiry,” will appear posthumously in the 2012 volume of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology.
Read Miller’s paper, “A Psychology for a Changing World,” which he presented as 1988/89 chairperson of the Psychotherapy Section of the British Psychological Society.
Miller will be deeply missed, but his work will continue to influence psychology and psychotherapy. CPN extends heartfelt condolences to Miller’s family.
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It was only recently, in May of this year, that I had the pleasure of Miller’s company. We were participants on a week long course with Iain McGilchrist at Schumacher college in Devon. Hearing of his death came late and was accompanied with profound shock. While I only briefly met Miller, I was touched by his generosity in conversation. It was clear to me that he was a deeply intuitive, soft-natured and generous man. I feel deeply privileged to have had this time in his company. His death is a very sad loss. My thoughts and well-wishes go out to his family and friends.
We all knew Miller and his family and with our dad (Don Bannister) spent many happy times together in south London during the 60′s. I remember the night when he and Don completed ‘The Evaluation of Personal Constructs’ at Bexley Hospital, though I had no idea of its’ meaning – just the importance of completing the task. He was a lovely man.
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As you have all said, Miller was a highly respected and valued member of his profession – as someone who knew him on a personal level, I must say that he will also be very much missed by those of us who feel privileged to call Miller a family friend. We also experienced his unrivalled skill and passion for his calling, and I am certain his passing will leave a void which cannot easily be filled.
Unlike many of the others commenting above I only met Miller for an afternoon, but that meeting was so refreshing and meaningful that instantly I had actually known him all my life. What a sad loss, what a miracle that we have known him at all.
How to imagine life without those wry and always pertinent comments, that crinkly smile and easy laugh? Such imagining is not bearable but to have had the opportunity to be with Miller in so many different conversations was a deep privilege, one for which I can only be grateful and humbled. It was a privilege to have known Miller, to have sensed what he meant by, and how he explored living out, ‘a personal approach to knowing’ (1989 ‘Between Psychology & Psychotherapy’). He has thrown a light onto a path — can I, can we walk it?
I will miss my friend, the story-teller, the encourager, the critic, the missives through the post. My sorrow is with Ingrid and all of Miller’s family.
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Miller will be sadly missed by all his friends and Constructivist colleagues in Ireland. Miller had recently visited Dublin with his wife Ingrid and hosted a workshop in Dublin on the theme of his keynote address to Constructivist Network Conference in USA in July USA “Enchanting Psychology”. Miller gave further reflections on his paper when he met with Irish Constructivists at Institute of Psychosomatic Medicine in Glastule Nov 10. On this occasion Miller enchanted his audience as only he could with his warmth, spacious accomodation of dialogue and incisive mind.
He had been one of the founding fathers of the Irish Constructivist community since he began visiting our shores in the early 1980s when he taught on the first Masters on Constructivist Psychology convened by Vincent Kenny and Prof.Ivor Browne at University College Dublin. He continued to harness the arts of conversation, poetry, prose and the visual arts in his quest for healing for all those who sought his insight, guidance and care.
The Irish Constructivist Association and Miller’s many friends in Ireland grieve his loss and offer our profound condolences to his wife Ingrid and his family.
Brion Sweeney
Chair Irish Constructivist Association
MILLER in MEMORIUM
I don’t know how Miller and I became friends – Miller was not my major professor, he was not my teacher – not in some official sense. My first awareness of him was while an intern under Don Bannister’s tutelage and miller was some phantom character who was a part of an inner circle of construct theory elites: Namely, Don banister and Fay Fransella. These three elites of PCT met weekly. Not being a part of these meetings, I imagined that their conversation would be about Psychological Theory and maybe Grids. I came to realize after spending time with Miller that he was about life and all that living involved. Grids and theory were only part of it.
At the Nebraska symposium, Miller was quietly and accurately characterized by those who knew him as “ a ground breaking revisionist, someone to whom attention should be paid. ‘
But my image of Miller, the serious thinker, soon was to undergo a revision of its own. He was not only a Giant within the world of Personal Construct Psychology; he was a poet and an artist. and a wonderful man . Miller was kind, and he was enthusiastic about life. My daughter describes him as one of her favorite people ever. She noted that he was truly was one of those very rare people who really listened to others, who could make people feel incredibly special by the depth of his interest, who laughed at himself and life, and who nurtured relationships with thoughtfulness and sincerity.
Miller added not only kindness to my family, but thoughts written on postcards sent at unexpected times which would lighten your heart after a long day. Those acts of kindness will be missed and thought about always.
While I did not meet Miller as a student, I met him as a friend, the person who was always in the back of my mind and to whom I would say to myself “ I wonder what Miller thinks about this”.
For me, I will miss him as my friend and as a wonderful person to be with. He always made me feel good. I will miss him, especially since we were in the midst of several conversations to be finished and I anticipate several more.
Miller was a towering figure in the PCP world and more widely in British Clinical Psychology. He contributed so much and spoke in a careful, deeply thought out and intensely moving way. I am so pleased to have heard him speak again at the Belgrade Conference in 2010 and to have had the chance to spend some time with him and Ingrid. A truly great man.
I first met Millar in the early 1970′s at Brunel. He was always generous with his time and he inspired successive generations of students , academics and practitioners. I particularly valued his writings on metaphor and his notions of story telling. The world has lost a gentle man. My thoughts are with his family at this time
What very sad news. I first met Miller in 1979, and spent some time visiting him in Dumfries. At any congress he attended anyone “in the know” went to hear Miller’s presentation, no matter what it was on, because it was always so stimulating. I saw him several times during the 1980s, but it had been decades between then and seeing him in Niagara last year. It seemed so wonderfully natural and comfortable to see him again and again to be stimulated by his ideas. I’m saddened to learn that will be the last time.