Donald Campbell earned a Masters in Social Work in Washington, D.C. where he worked as a psychiatric social worker and family therapist before training as a child analyst at the Anna Freud Centre in London. He is a training and supervising analyst, Distinguished Fellow, past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and former Secretary General of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He also served as Chair of the Portman Clinic in London where he worked in outpatient psychoanalytic psychotherapy as a child, adolescent and adult analyst for 30 years with violent and delinquent individuals and patients suffering from a perversion. He has published 63 papers and chapters on such subjects as adolescence, doubt, shame, metaphor, violence, paedophilia, child sexual abuse, and horror film monsters. In 2017 he co-authored with Rob Hale, Working in the Dark: Understanding the pre-suicide state of mind, which was published by Routledge. In 2022 he co-edited with Ronny Jaffè When the Body Speaks: A British-Italian dialogue, also published by Routledge.
