Greta Sykes

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is not adequately provided with supporting documents (for example individual proofs ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Greta Friederun Sykes

Greta Friederun Sykes (born October 14, 1944 in Oppenheim ) is a German-English writer, feminist and child psychologist . She lives in London .

Life and work

Greta Sykes is the daughter of the engineer and director of BP in Essen, Johannes Hermann Walter Bergert, and the physiotherapist Helene Louise Deppermann. After the war the family lived in Hamburg . Sykes attended the Charlotte-Paulsen-Gymnasium in Hamburg-Wandsbek and began studying philosophy there in 1965 . Difficulties in the relationship with her mother and outrage over the hypocritical confrontation with National Socialism and the silence about it prompted her to emigrate to England. She has two children from an early divorce with John Frank Sykes. She studied art, psychology and education in London and was involved early on in committees that supported the Helsinki Process and advocated an east-west rapprochement in Great Britain. She worked as a school psychologist, followed by her work at University College, London (UCL), where she was a lecturer in school psychology.

Greta Sykes writes a diary and poems, draws and paints. Since 1989 she has been a member of the left-wing association London Voices . She publishes poems and short prose in anthologies and takes part in readings in this literary group. Her texts are strongly based on the concept of Gaia as treated in James Lovelock's Gaia Theory. In feminist discourse, Sykes searches ancient sources for traces of matriarchy and analyzes the reasons for the loss of the dominant role of women in the course of further history. Her psychological studies address the growing inequality of the sexes also in the present. In contrast, she sees the ancient figure of Andromache as the prototype of a powerful woman who dominates her inner and outer living space and thus gains respect and a hearing. Sykes is the chair of the Socialist History Society, for which she lectures and writes articles.

Sykes' first novel was published in 2015, initially in an English version Under Charred Skies . He draws an autobiographical family history against the background of the labor movement in the Ruhr area during the emergence of National Socialism. Greta Sykes writes simultaneously in German and English, her texts are available in both languages, but are each separate structures.

Her second novel was published in 2020, so far only in English. 'The Defeat of Gilgamesh' is the result of her studies of the world's first civilization in Mesopotamia.

Works (selection)

  • with Helen Mercer and Jan Wolf: Deadly Persuasion . Teaching the Cold War. A study of school history textbooks. [London] 1985.
  • ISBN 0-9511182-0-X ( online )
  • with Edith Beleites: City travel book London. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1989. ISBN 3-87975-489-6
  • The Gaia collection. Liberating poems for everyday positive thinking use. RG Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 2004.
  • The Intimacy of the Universe. London Voices and Workers Writers Federation, London 2006.
  • The Farmers and the Class Conscious Czech Border Guard. United Press, London 2005.
  • Under Charred Skies. Authorhouse Publishing, London 2015. ISBN 978-1-5049-9017-2
  • A Creative Pattern for Peace, Gordon Schaffer's summary of the Helsinki Final Act. With drawings by Greta Sykes. London 2000.
  • The Shipping News and Other Poems. AuthorHouse UK, London 2015. ISBN 978-1-5246-3525-1
  • Under a scorched sky. Frauenschicksale, Verlag am park in the edition ost, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-945187-38-8
  • The defeat of Gilgamesh, Austin Macauley, London, 2020, ISBN 978-1-5289-7852-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andromache for psychologists. What we can learn from antiquity. In: Academic Research Journal od Psychology and Counceling, Vol. 2 (1), pp. 1-7.
personal data
SURNAME Sykes, Greta
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sykes, Greta Friederun (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-English writer, feminist and child psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Oppenheim