Alice Ricciardi-von Platen was the youngest of the four daughters of Count Carl von Platen-Hallermund (1870–1919) and Elizabeth Alten (1875–1970); she grew up on the
Weissenhaus estate in
Schleswig-Holstein. Her father died early. She attended the boarding school
Schule Schloss Salem, which was then under the leadership of
Kurt Hahn. After completing her medical studies in
Munich in 1934 and a subsequent clinical internship in a Berlin children's hospital, she spent the years 1936-39 in Florence and 1940 in Rome. She then returned to Germany, where her son George was born in 1941 and practised until early 1944 as a supply doctor in
Bavaria, and until 1945 as a country doctor in
Austria. In that role, she was confronted with the Nazi
involuntary euthanasia program via accounts from her patients' relations, but she could save only a few patients. After the war, she worked as a volunteer at the
psychosomatic clinic of the
Heidelberg University, with
Viktor von Weizsäcker, where she continued her training in psychotherapy. From December 1946 she was an official observer of the Nuremberg
doctors' trial, and in 1947 she also attended the
Hadamar trial (regarding
Hadamar Killing Facility) in
Frankfurt am Main in an unofficial capacity. Later in that year she joined professor Zillich at the mental hospital St. Getreu in
Bamberg. In 1949 Ricciardi-von Platen moved to London, where she worked – under the supervision of
Michael Balint – in a
psychotherapy and
marriage counselling centre, and also in a
psychiatric hospital. She completed her psychoanalytic and group analytic training and became a member of the
Group Analytic Society. Subsequently, she worked at the
Tavistock Clinic and the
Bexley Hospital, eventually setting up her own psychiatry practice in England. She met the organizational consultant
Augusto Baron Ricciardi (1915–1982), whom she married in 1956 and whom she accompanied to
Belgium and
Libya. From 1967 until her death in 2008 she lived and worked as a psychoanalyst in
Rome and in
Cortona (Tuscany). ==Observer at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial==