The Portman Clinic is an NHS outpatient clinic that offers psychotherapeutic treatment for individuals who are suffering from sexual perversions or have committed acts of delinquency or violence.
In 1933, under the auspices of the Institute for the Scientific Study of Delinquency, a group of psychoanalysts, including Dr Edward Glover, Dr Grace Pailthorpe and Kate Friedlander, began treating delinquent and criminal patients through psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Many of these patients were found to be suffering from problems with disturbing sexual fantasies, behaviour and experiences. The Clinic began treating patients who presented with such problems as a separate group as many did not fall into delinquent or criminal categories.
The Portman Clinic has continued to treat these two groups incorporating violent patients as a third group in more recent years. In 1948 the Clinic became part of the NHS eventually moving from its original location in the West End of London to its present house in north west London in 1970. In 1994 it acquired Trust status together with the Tavistock Clinic. In 2006 the Trust became The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.
The Clinic offers a highly specialised long term psychotherapy service to adults as well as to adolescents and children. Following a careful assessment, the patient may be offered individual or group psychotherapy as appropriate; on some occasions couple or family psychotherapy may be offered. Sometimes an assessment only may be offered in order to offer assistance to a professional in looking after a patient.
The Portman Clinic is the only clinic of its kind in the UK that specialises in such treatment to these groups of patients.
On the basis of its clinical experience, the Portman Clinic offers training and consultancy on a national basis to teams and services who treat and manage very difficult patients.
The clinic offers several formal courses specifically focussing on the requirements of those professionals in the NHS and the Criminal Justice System who work with individuals who are delinquent, have committed criminal acts, acted violently or are troubled through sexual impulses often feeling compelled to act in a way which may cause distress or harm to self or others.
Psychoanalytically informed consultancy and supervision is offered to individuals, teams and organisations in the health, prison probation and social services as well as the voluntary sector. The work can address the particular needs of a specific patient, group, discipline or institution and is largely conducted off site.
The Portman Clinic has an active research programme which focuses on:
- the psychological processes underpinning violent and sexual enactment
- the relationship between underlying psychological processes and risk of enactment
- the impact of psychoanalytic psychotherapy on the processes which underpin violent and sexual enactment
- the use of psychoanalytic teaching, training and consultation to improve risk assessment and care provision for people who enact and are treated in secure settings
Projects recently completed, in progress and in development include:
- An evaluation of a consultative intervention at a special hospital
- Patients' and clinicans' perceptions of change in psychoanalytic forensic psychotherapy
- Pilot evaluation of group psychotherapy at the Portman Clinic
- Mental health professionals' perceptions of risk
- Outcome study of Portman Clinic psychotherapy
The Portman Clinic provides treatment for a group of patients for whom treatment is not normally provided by generic services. Work with these patients requires specialist training and at the Portman Clinic treatment is provided by senior staff at consultant level, medical and non-medical.
Confidentiality
Everyone working in the NHS has a legal duty to maintain patients' confidentiality and at the Portman Clinic we attach particular importance to this responsibility. On rare occasions and in exceptional situations there may be an overriding reason to share information with others either to protect a patient or another person. In this event the matter would first be discussed with the patient.
For information about the Portman, its services and activities please contact:
The Clinic Manager
The Portman Clinic
8 Fitzjohns Avenue
London NW3 5NA
Tel: 020 7794 8262
Fax: 020 7447 3748
Email: jvogler@tavi-port.nhs.uk
