David Huntingford Malan (21 March 1922 – 2020) was a British psychoanalytic psychotherapy practitioner and researcher recognized for his contribution to the development of psychotherapy. He promoted scientific spirit of inquiry, openness, and simplicity within the field. He is also noted for his development of the Malan triangles, which became a rubric in which therapists can reflect upon what they are doing and where they are in relational space at any given moment. Early life Malan was born in Ootacamund in the province of Tamil Nadu in India on 21 March 1922. His father was English, working in the Indian Civil service as Paymaster General of Madras State, and his mother was American. When Malan was seven years old his father died from pneumonia and Malan and his mother came to England. At preparatory boarding school Malan particularly enjoyed learning Latin and Greek, but as a scholar at Winchester he became interested in chemistry which he then studied, winning a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated in 1944 with a 1st class Honours degree in Chemistry. During the war Malan was seconded to the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E), initially to develop devices for Resistance fighters, and later incendiary bombs for use in the Far East. After a year at Courtaulds doing fundamental research, he knew he wanted to become a Psychotherapist. In 1947 Malan began a training analysis and medical training at the same time with the objective of practising Psychiatry and ultimately Psychotherapy. His initial analysis was with Balint and then with Winnicott. Career After qualifying from the London Hospital in 1952, he worked as a casualty officer, then as a psychiatrist at the Maudsley before transferring to the Tavistock Clinic in 1956. He became a Consultant in the Adult dept. in 1966 and remained there until his retirement in 1982. In 1956, at the Tavistock Clinic, Balint asked him to join his Brief Psychotherapy research group investigating whether brief focal therapy was effective. Malan analysed the results which were highly encouraging. During his early years as a psychotherapist, he already advocated the accurate, reproducible clinical descriptions, as well as the prediction of desirable outcomes prior to the process of therapy or an "intention to treat", which are then followed by unbiased evaluation post-treatment. This approach was met with suspicion during the 1950s within the analytic community, including Malan's colleagues at the Tavistock Clinic. In 1967 Malan developed