The Tavistock Clinic has a worldwide reputation for therapeutic approaches in mental health in the public sector (NHS). Besides a major commitment to outpatient clinical services in the London region, it provides many leading postgraduate training and academic courses for mental health and social care professions. For over fifty years Tavistock staff have published important clinical and theoretical papers and more recently, since the appointment of several academic professors, there has been a growing output of systematic research.
In 1920, under its founder Dr Crichton-Miller's leadership, the Clinic made a significant contribution to the understanding of the traumatic effects of 'shell shock' and how it could be treated by talking, listening and understanding. Before that soldiers who suffered these symptoms in battle were regarded as cowards and likely to be punished, even shot. The Tavistock was set up by charitable funding to provide mental health treatment to the general population based on psychological approaches.
The Second World War saw many of the Tavistock's professional staff joining the armed services as psychiatric specialists, where some (notably Dr Wilfred Bion) introduced radical new methods of selecting officers, using the 'leaderless group' as an instrument to observe which men could take responsibility for others, by being aware of their preoccupations rather than simply by giving orders. This led to reductions in the number of applicants rejected.
These wartime experiences have continued to influence the clinic's work in group teaching and work discussion, in consultancy, in the understanding of early separation from parents (as happened during evacuation of children) and in the treatment of trauma. Today, the Trauma Unit offers a training workshop in the understanding of trauma and its treatment and is called on to offer help in national and international disasters. This work is described in Understanding Trauma published in 1998 by Karnac Books, one of the many texts in the Tavistock Book Series.
The Clinic's research work during the 1950s altered several important aspects of medical practice. Dr Michael Balint's work initiated a new understanding of the relationship between GP and patient, and had a profound influence on the future training and practice of GPs. Dr John Bowlby's work is widely regarded as amongst the most important work in developmental psychology and led to a great volume of research on the lives of infants and children; this is better known as "attachment theory". Dr Bowlby and his colleagues helped to change the attitudes of the medical profession to child development and to the care of children in hospital, and also had an important influence on social work.
The development of Systemic Family Therapy in the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on the interaction between children, adolescents and parents within families, now represents a substantial body of theoretical knowledge and clinical work in the Trust and is the basis of its training and research in family therapy, one of the most prestigious in the country.
In 1999, the Tavistock Clinic welcomed a BBC2 film crew into the Clinic to film a series of six programmes "The Talking Cure" on its clinical work with patients. These were broadcast in November and December of the same year. A book of the same title, on related themes (edited by Dr David Taylor) was published at the same time
More recently a new Centre for Mental Health in Nursing has been launched in collaboration with Middlesex University. The Centre was opened by HRH Princess Alexandra on 22 June 2001, and is leading a new range of training programmes for nurses, based on the Tavistock approach, which respond to their needs in a fast-changing NHS.
Brief history of the Tavistock Clinic's location and its partners and neighbours
The clinic was founded in 1920, in Tavistock Square, London, moving first to Malet Place near University College London, then to Beaumont Street near Marylebone Road, before settling in its present purpose built accommodation, The Tavistock Centre, in Swiss Cottage in 1967. This building was until 1994 shared with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, (now The Tavistock Institute) an independent social science research, advisory and training organisation which had developed methods of organisations consultancy alongside the clinic in the middle and later years of the twentieth century.
Both clinical and consultancy work was carried out in the Tavistock Clinic until it became part of the new NHS in 1948, and the Institute was founded as a charitable company. Together and apart, clinic and institute have been preoccupied with the powerful effects on behaviour and on society of relationships between people. These apply not only in intimate relationships such as a couple or a family, but also in organisations such as factories, businesses, universities, governments, and armed forces. The Tavistock Institute is now located in the City of London but links are retained through the consultancy work of both organisations and the group relations training programmes.
Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, originally the Family Discussion Bureau, a part of the Institute, remains in the Tavistock Centre to this day, but is not part of the NHS service. It provides psychoanalytic couples therapy for fees based on income.
The Child Guidance Training Centre (CGTC), founded as the London Child Guidance Clinic in Islington in 1929, was housed in the Tavistock Centre from 1967 until merging with the Tavistock Clinic's Department for Children and Parents, to become the Child and Family Department, in 1985. The Tavistock Mulberry Bush Day Unit was originally a part of CGTC.
Detailed history in
Dicks, Henry (1970) Fifty Years of the Tavistock Clinic, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (out of print)
See also
Miller, Eric (2002) The strengths and limitations of a psychodynamic perspective in organisational consultancy in Object Relations and Integrative Psychotherapy Inger Safvestad-Nolan, Patrick Nolan (Editors), London, Whurr
