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My friend Judith Brearley, who has died aged 85, was an influential figure in the landscape of Scottish social work and psychoanalytic thinking. Her life was defined by what she called a “providential” path – a sense of being in the right place at the right time in terms of professional opportunities.

Between 1970 and 1991, she taught in the social work department at Edinburgh University, first as a lecturer and from 1981 as senior lecturer. During her 21-year tenure, she inspired myriads of social work students, and in 2018 she received the university’s Nora Milne award for her lifelong service to social work.

In the early 1970s, she was one of the founding members of the Scottish Institute of Human Relations (SIHR), where she trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and applied psychoanalytic theory to help professionals manage anxiety in the organisational context. She was also instrumental in setting up and teaching on many of SIHR’s courses. Her influence extended across Scottish society, including serving in the 80s as chair of Couple Counselling and the Scottish Pre-School Play Association (now Early Years Scotland).

Judith had the ability to see potential in others before they saw it in themselves, offering a form of professional “apprenticeship” that transformed the careers of those she mentored and supervised.

She was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Her father, Clifford Brearley, was a maintenance engineer at Thornton and Ross, a pharmaceutical firm in Huddersfield, and her mother, Bessie (nee Whitley), an administrator and later an almoner; Judith had a brother who died in his teens. As a child, she attended a Baptist Sunday school and her Christian faith remained of great importance to her all her life.

She valued these wartime Yorkshire roots, but left at 18 to study sociology at the London School of Economics, rebelling against her headteacher at Greenhead grammar school, who thought she should become a maths teacher. On graduating Judith moved to Edinburgh, trained as a medical social worker then secured a post in London at St George’s hospital before returning to Edinburgh to join the staff of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, and then the university.

In retirement, she earned a first-class degree in humanities with music from the Open University. She loved music and playing the piano throughout her life.

In her final years, Judith faced a hard struggle with dementia. Though the disease was cruel, her constancy of spirit remained. In her last days she would grasp the hands of her friends, whose names were long forgotten, and say, “I love you — very much.” Her professional ability was always surpassed by her immense generosity of heart.