MB ChB Edin 1923, MD 1927; DPM Univ Lond 1925; FRCP Lond 1946; Hon MSc Manch 1953.
Anderson was born on 8 July 1901 and educated at Edinburgh. He served in a number of psychiatric hospitals, including the Maudsley Hospital and the Cassel Hospital and also studied in Frankfurt before the war. From 1940 he served in the RNVR as a neuropsychiatric specialist, being promoted to surgeon commander in 1943. He returned to Maudsley as a physician in 1946 where he also taught in the Institue of Psychiatry. From 1949 to 1965 Anderson was professor of psychiatry and director of the department at the University of Manchester. Anderson was an important influence in the phenomenological approach to psychiatry. Anderson was a president of the Section of Psychiatry of the Royal Society of Medicine. He died on 3 September 1981.