My father, Thom Osborn, who has died aged 85, was a humanist, doctor, psychiatrist, writer, producer and director for stage and screen, a behavioural scientist, group trainer, political radical, goatherd, squatter, trapeze artist and pianist.
He was born in Berlin, to Franz Osborn and Tamara Amiredjibi, both concert pianists and members of the Communist party. The family left Germany immediately after Hitler was became chancellor, sponsored by the Jewish philanthropist Sir Robert Mayer, who helped many Jewish refugees to settle in the UK, especially musicians. They first lived with the Labour MP Morgan Philips Price in Gloucestershire. Thom went to school at Redhurst, a progressive school, and then boarded at Bryanston in Dorset. He studied medicine at Lincoln College, Oxford, and did his clinical studies at the London hospital, where he met Nancy Herbert, who became his wife.
After a successful appeal as a conscientious objector, he went to work at Fulbourn psychiatric hospital in Cambridgeshire for two years. While there, Thom passed the specialist qualification in psychiatry.
Disillusioned with medicine, he moved the family to rural Wales in 1961, and tried to make a living through writing. He sent scripts to the Royal Court theatre, and was offered a job there as literary manager, working with Keith Johnstone. He was a reader, director, translator – his translation of Wedekind’s Spring Awakening was performed – actor and writer. He spent a year at the Belgrade theatre in Coventry as a trainee director, funded by ABC Television.
While there he became interested in improvisation and via Coventry art student connections he was invited to do some lecturing at Goldsmiths College in London. Later, at the Polytechnic of North London (now London Metropolitan University), Thom set up the diploma in applied behavioural science (bioenergetics), working with improvisation and masks.
He and Nancy separated in 1969, but remained good friends.
He spent the 1970s in radical “counterculture” politics. He made two short films – Getting Ready, shown at festivals throughout the world, and Blemish. He acted the part of a doctor in the film Orlando (1992), directed by his lifelong friend Sally Potter.
In later life, although increasingly frail, he continued to rail against the structures of capitalism, and to promote the benefits of collaboration and co-operative living. He never stopped writing, producing many drafts for films, plays, stories and poems.
Thom is survived by his children, Jason, Kate and me; his grandchildren, Colin, Georgia, Alexis and Ruby; and by Nancy and his brother Christopher.
