Halla Beloff 1930-2025

Halla Beloff, who was born on 11 May 1930 in Ludwigsburg, Germany and died on 2 February 2025 in Edinburgh, Scotland, was a feminist who revered Vera Brittain, a Marxist who revered Rosa Luxemburg, a social psychologist who revered Marie Jahoda, a militant atheist who donated her body to science and requested no funeral service be held for her after her death. 

Halla may have appeared to some to be a pillar of the Establishment with her cut glass English accent and extraordinarily erudite vocabulary, but Halla regarded herself as an outsider and stood in solidarity with 'other outsiders' in opposition to all forms of othering and oppression in both private and public spheres. Halla was an inspiring teacher and mentor who had a profound influence on countless generations of students. 

Halla was, at heart, an intellectual as opposed to an academic. She was proud of her position as Visiting Professor of Photographic Culture at the University of Derby, 1998-2003, and she valued the contributions she made to BBC Radio Scotland, which she considered a home to 'real intellectuals', at least as highly as those she made to the Academy. Halla was a regular broadcaster on psychological and arts topics from 1970 to 1999 and also worked as a freelance reviewer and commentator for BBC Radio Scotland. 

Paradoxically, perhaps, Halla Beloff was also an incisive administrator who served the British Psychological Society tirelessly in a plethora of key roles over many years. Halla served as a member of at least eight Society Boards and Committees; served as Chair of the Psychology of Women Section; the Publications Committee; and the Social Psychology Section, was Editor of the Society's British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, served as an Honorary British Psychological Society Visual Archivist (1991-2003) and was President of The British Psychological Society from 1983 to 1984.

Halla was an only child who, as anti-Semitism tightened its grip in Nazi Germany, relocated with her non-religious German Jewish parents to London, only to be evacuated, solo, to the countryside to avoid the Blitz. Halla was the first of her family to go to university, becoming a part-time evening student of Psychology and Social Anthropology at Birkbeck College whilst employed during weekdays in a cigarette factory. Attending extra lectures at University College London (UCL), Halla met John Beloff. They became friends and eventually wife and husband. An invitation to John and Halla by a high-profile academic visitor at UCL, R.B. Cattell, issued because their competence in factor analysis impressed him, led to Halla and John working for a year in Cattell's Laboratory of Personality Assessment and Group Behaviour at the University of Illinois (1952-1953). A period at Queens University, Belfast, followed, where Halla did her PhD on The Anal Character. Halla and John then relocated to the University of Edinburgh at the invitation of James Drever junior, or 'Secundus' as Halla would relish on insisting. Halla was appointed to teach social psychology. 

Early in her career, Halla published some relatively conventional psychological research on social conformity (Beloff, 1958), face perception (Beloff, H., & Beloff, J. 1959; Beloff & Simpson, 1968) and peer pressure (Beloff and Temperley, 1972). Later in her career Halla published in: feminism and psychology (Beloff, 1992; Beloff, 1993; Beloff, 1998;); on qualitative methods (Beloff, 1997); and on medical ethics (Beloff, 2003). Halla also did some professional publishing related to her work for the Society including editing a Supplement to the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society on the 'Burt affair' (Beloff, 1980) and co-editing two volumes in the Society's 'Psychology Survey' series (Nicholson and Beloff, 1984); Colman and Beloff, 1987). 

Halla's quality of transdisciplinary engagement with 'camera culture' is, however, in a different league. Her book, Camera Culture (Beloff, 1985a. See also: Beloff, 1984) is now a classic. Halla also published in: Philosophical Psychology (Beloff, 1988) on self‐portraits of eminent photographers; in History of Photography (Beloff, 1993), on the photographer Julia Maragret Cameron); in a key textbook for students of photography (Beloff, 2002); as a public intellectual in New Society(Beloff, 1985b) (about family photograph albums) and in Leonardo ('an international channel of communication for artists who use science and developing technologies in their work') (Beloff, 1983).

Halla's most interesting work combined simultaneous engagement with art, culture, photography, sexuality and feminism. Halla's essay, Lesbian Masks Beauty and other negotiations (Beloff, 2001) was published in a book of Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality and many other fascinating pieces are to be found in now rare exhibition catalogues. For example, Halla wrote: about Rembrandt's Impression Management for Glasgow Museums (Beloff, 1990); about photographs by Margaret Watkins (1884-1969) for a catalogue published by Street Level Photography Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland to accompany an exhibition (Beloff, 1995); and gave a superb condensed summary of what it is to engage in critical analysis of photographs of women (Beloff, 1989) written for a brochure to accompany a Stills Gallery (Edinburgh)Touring Exhibition. 

In was in this latter article, after emphasising that 'the role of the photographer has been maintained in the domain of men', that Halla observed: 'This is of more import for cultural aspects such as image-making than it is for producing commodities such as bread. Baxters would likely bake the same loaves as bakers.' I had to go to the full Oxford English Dictionary to learn that baxter is an early middle English term for a female baker, a term which the OED describes as 'Now rare (chiefly Scottish after 16th cent.)' Classic Halla!

• David Fryer is recipient in November 2023 of the European Community Psychology Association Lifetime Career Award for outstanding, long-term scientific contribution to Community Psychology theory, research, and practice.[email protected]

References

Beloff, H. (1958). Two forms of social conformity: Acquiescence and conventionality. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 56(1), 99–104. 

Beloff, H., & Beloff, J. (1959). Unconscious self-evaluation using a stereoscope. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 275–278.

Beloff, H. & Simpson, C. (1968). Some Transactional Perceptions of African Faces. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. 

Beloff, H. and Temperley, K. (1972). The Power of the Peers: Bronfenbrenner's Moral Dilemmas in Scotland. Scottish Educational Review, Vol.4 (1), p.3-10.

Beloff, H. (1980). Balance Sheet on Burt.  British Psychological Society (November 15, 1980). Issued as a Supplement to the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, Vol.33.

Beloff, H. (1983). Social interaction in photographing. Leonardo 16(3), 165-171.

Beloff, H. (1984). A social psychologist in the camera culture. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 37, pp 287-296.

Nicholson, J. & Beloff, H. (Eds.) (1984). Psychology Survey 5. The British Psychological Society. 

Beloff, H. (1985a). Camera Culture. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

Beloff, H. (1985b). The Fairytale Album. New Society, vol 72, Issue 1168, May 16, pp.226-227.

Colman, A. & Beloff, H. (Eds.) (1987). Psychology Survey 6. The British Psychological Society.  The British Psychology Society. 

Beloff, H. (1988). The Eye and the me: Self‐portraits of eminent photographers. Philosophical Psychology, 1(3), 295–311. 

Beloff, H. (1989). Stereotypes and Realities: Scratching the Negative. Essay in Picturing Women. A Stills Gallery Touring Exhibition, Sept 1989.

Beloff, H. (1990). Rembrandt's Impression Management in Chapman, Perry, Beloff, Franken & Walsh. Rembrandt By Himself. Published by Glasgow Museums, Glasgow,

Beloff, H. (1992). On being ordinary. Feminism and Psychology, Vol 2, Issue 3, pp. 424-426.

Beloff, H. (1993). Facing Julia Margaret Cameron. History of Photography, 17(1), 115–117. 

Beloff, H. (1993). Progress on the BPS Psychology of Lesbianism Front. Feminism and Psychology, 3(2), 282-283. 

Beloff, H. (1995) Essay in McCulloch, Martha (Editor) (1995). Margaret Watkins 1884-1969 Photographs. A catalogue published by at Street Level Photography Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland to accompany an exhibition of photographs. Contains essays by: Halla Beloff, Joseph Mulholland and Lori Pauli.

Beloff, H. (1997). Making and un-making identities A psychologist looks at art-work. In Doing Qualitative Analysis in Psychology. London, Psychology Press

Beloff, H. (1998) Incivility and worse troubles: a footnote to the Billig comments on C.R. Brand. Feminism and Psychology, Vol 8, Issue 2, pp. 321-235.

Beloff, H. (2001). Lesbian Masks, Beauty and other negotiations. In Masquerade and Identities. Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality by Efrat Tseëlon. London, Routledge.

Beloff, H. (2002). Image as Icon, Photography: A Critical Introduction, Ed. Liz Wells, 2002, p.44-45

Beloff, H. (2003). Medical Ethics in Professional Conduct. The International Journal of Human Rights, 7(1), 9-15.

Further reading

The Beloffs – history told from below. David Fryer on the book 'Reminiscences of a Refugee Childhood' by Halla Beloff, as told to and with illustrations by Zoe Beloff (06 10 2022).

An interview with Halla Beloff, conducted by Helen Ross in 2008, available in the British Psychological Society Archive Centre of the History of Psychology Centre.