Table of Contents

Preface
Foreword: The Tavistock enigma

Part I
The Tavistock legacy

CHAPTER ONE
Challenge, change and sabotage

CHAPTER TWO
What lies beneath

CHAPTER THREE
Psychoanalysis, social science, and the Tavistock tradition

CHAPTER FOUR
Research at the Tavistock

CHAPTER FIVE
“Mummy’s gone away and left me behind” James Robertson at the Tavistock Clinic

CHAPTER SIX
The Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, 1920–2020

CHAPTER SEVEN
John Bowlby at the Tavistock Clinic

CHAPTER EIGHT
Balint Groups

CHAPTER NINE
Alexis Brook in primary care

CHAPTER TEN
Extending the reach of the “talking cure”

Part II
Pregnancy and under 5s

CHAPTER ELEVEN
The psychopathology of publications concerning reactions to stillbirths and neonatal deaths

CHAPTER TWELVE
Parent–infant psychotherapy at a baby clinic

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Service for under-fives in the child and family department at the Tavistock: short-term applications of psychoanalytic practice and infant observation

Part III
Children and Adolescents

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Child Guidance Training Centre 1929–1984

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gloucester House: a story of endurance, inspiration, and innovation

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A foothold in paediatrics

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Early psychoanalytic approaches to autism at the Tavistock

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Eating Disorders Workshop—Tavistock Adolescent Department

CHAPTER NINETEEN
The creation of a service for children and adolescents facing gender identity issues

CHAPTER TWENTY
The establishment of the Young People’s Counselling Service

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Facing it out: the Adolescent Department

Part IV
Couples and families

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A brief history of Tavistock Relationships

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tavistock Relationships and the growth of couple psychoanalysis 1988–2019: a personal memoir

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Family therapy across the decades; evolution and discontinuous change

Part V
Working with adults

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Brief psychotherapy: practice and research

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Tavistock Adult Depression Study (TADS)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Working at the Tavistock Clinic Adult Department 1972–1997

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Adult Department

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Adult Department: a group at work

CHAPTER THIRTY
The Fitzjohn’s Unit

Part VI
Psychology, social work, and nursing

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The psychology discipline

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Holding tensions: social work and the Tavistock

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Nursing at the Tavistock

Part VII
Consultation, court, and organisations

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Child protection and the courts

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Autonomic countertransference: the psychopathic mind and the institution

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Tavistock legacy in America: making sense of society

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Psychoanalytic thinking in organisational settings and the therapeutic community tradition

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Group relations and religion

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The new landscape of leadership: living in radical uncertainty

Part VIII
Performance, publications, and policy

CHAPTER FORTY
“Give them time” Pigeon holes and pasta—the making of a Tavistock TV programme

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The Tavistock Gazette, pantomimes, and books

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Tavistock pantomimes

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The Tavistock Clinic Series

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Tavistock policy seminars: a contained and disruptive space

Afterword

Soldiering on

References
Index

About the Author

Margot Waddell, PhD, is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis where she is currently the Chair of Publications. She has a background in Classics and literature and took a PhD at Cambridge on George Eliot’s novels. She is a child analyst and worked for many years as a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, London. She co-edits the Tavistock Clinic Book series and has published widely. Her book Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality was published by Karnac in 2002. In 1994 her Understanding Twelve to Fourteen Year Olds was published (reprinted in 2005 by Jessica Kingsley). Most recently, in 2018, she published On Adolescence: Inside Stories (Routledge).

After a first degree in philosophy, Sebastian Kraemer qualified in medicine in 1970. He trained in paediatrics in Glasgow, Manchester and London, then in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic, London. From 1980 he was a consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock Clinic (until 2003) and in the paediatric department at the Whittington Hospital London (until 2015). He is an honorary consultant at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust and continues to write, teach and work with staff in NHS and children’s services.

Reviews

'A book worth reading about a great history [...] This book has now made the history and significance of the Tavi, including the mythical side (e.g. “Operation Phoenix”, the new life from the ashes of the Second World War) much clearer to me.'
*Thomas von Salis, Swiss Archives of Neurology, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (translated)*

There is much individual and collective wisdom between the lines of this thought-provoking collection, which charts the scope and evolution of the Tavistock’s pioneering and often controversial work, illustrates its influence on social policy, and tracks its innovative and often revelatory explorations of the human condition. For decades, the Tavistock’s work has helped shape how we see ourselves, as persons and as a society. Much thinking that has entered the mainstream emerged from its challenging, interdisciplinary research and practice, and this book shows stage by stage how a self-questioning approach generates new knowledge, and how theory can be humanely applied.
*Dame Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize winner, 2009 and 2012*

Some institutions make their contribution not just by discharging duties or doing jobs, but by creating a culture. The impact of the Tavistock on our social assumptions, its impact on education, business, the understanding of the family, the life of the arts and, of course, therapy, demonstrates beyond any doubt that it has genuinely been a culturally defining presence. It has educated the listening and the noticing of generations; and in that sense has enlarged the personal and the social world for all of us. It is right that the hundred years of its remarkable life should be marked and celebrated in this welcome book.
*Dr Rowan Williams, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury*

The “Tavi” – a name that is instantly recognisable wherever people get together to reflect on what makes us tick as people, institutions, and society. This delightful mixture of homage and history is a witty and wise tribute to the first hundred years of a remarkable place.
*Professor Sir Simon Wessely, Regius Chair of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London*

… a splendid publication that vividly portrays aspects of a remarkable institution’s history over the past 100 years. … It is such a highly enjoyable book that I read it end to end in one sitting, and since then I have repeatedly and selectively dipped into its forty-four chapters. … the editors and contributors have given us a brilliant and inspiring 2020 vision.
*International Journal of Infant Observation and Its Applications 23(3), 2020*

This thought-provoking collection of essays […] is wide ranging in scope, with sections on social work, nursing, court work, publications, government policy and much more. […] Part history, part homage to a national institution […] There is hope and wisdom here from a multiplicity of voices […] This book is a tribute to the place that first put psychotherapy on the public agenda a century ago and has done so much to educate the way we listen and observe.
*Jane Cooper, former senior counsellor at University of Cambridge – Therapy Today, March 2021*