Miriam Williams; Founded Health Center

Dr. Miriam Mindla Williams, the psychoanalyst who founded the Los Angeles Child Development Center to provide low-cost mental health services to poor families, has died. She was 82.

Williams, who in recent years had the title president emeritus of the center, died Saturday in her home in Brentwood.

The current president of the organization, Dr. R. James Perkins, praised Williams as “a remarkable woman who worked tirelessly to improve the quality of life for troubled children whose lives might otherwise be ravaged by drugs, gangs, suicide and violence.

“She believed in the resilience of the human spirit and that each person, if given the opportunity, has the capacity for growth,” he said. “Thanks to the inspired work she began, thousands of children are productive members of our city today.”

Williams got the idea for the Child Development Center when she worked for the Reiss Davis Child Guidance Center (later renamed the Reiss Davis Child Study Center). The list of 150 children or more waiting to receive psychotherapy there constantly nagged at her.

In 1977, Williams gathered several colleagues from the UCLA School of Medicine and the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute to provide therapy. The new center was a clinic without walls--doctors and analysts provided help for children from their own offices. The administration and matching of patient to analyst was initially run from a small office in the Santa Monica YMCA.

Williams and her friends offered low-cost treatment to children for whatever duration was necessary on a sliding fee scale beginning with $1. Fund-raising became a major part of the organization’s work.

Therapy for children was not a luxury but a social necessity, she told The Times in 1981.

“The crime rate in this country, the murders usually are done by people who have not been taken care of well. They can’t care about others,” she said. “It’s very rare that you have an instance where there has been a caring person and no response. If there is someone really interested in you, there is a response.”

The ninth of 11 children, Williams was born in a part of Austria that is now considered Poland. When she was 16, she read two books by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and announced, “That’s for me.”

She earned her medical degree at Berlin University and studied at Edinburgh University. In London, she studied at the London Psychoanalytic Institute with Freud’s daughter Anna Freud.

Williams served as director of training at the Reiss Davis clinic from 1956 until 1976. She also taught at UCLA and wrote widely on child psychology for professional journals and anthologies.

Williams is survived by her son, Benjamin George Williams, and three grandsons.

Plans are being made for a public memorial service in March. Memorial donations may be made to the Los Angeles Child Development Center, 141 S. Barrington Ave., 2nd Floor, Los Angeles CA 90049.