My colleague David Armstrong, who has died aged 91, spent more than six decades shaping the field of systems psychodynamics. With a rare knack for expressing complex ideas in simple language, he placed psychoanalytic thinking at the heart of organisational life, giving consultants, entrepreneurs and business leaders a practical language for understanding the unconscious dimensions of work.
Born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, to Elsie (nee Clarke) and Charles Armstrong, who were missionaries on what was then the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and later in East Anglia and Italy, David was a twin and shared a close early bond with his brother, Michael. David was educated at Culford school, near Bury St Edmunds and went on to read philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1954, followed by two years at King’s College, Cambridge, studying psychology under Oliver Zangwill and later Larry Weiskrantz, an unusual combination that underpinned his later ability to bridge social theory and clinical insight.
