Tavistock Institute

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This article is about the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. For the organization which contains the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, see Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, and for the current National Health arm see Tavistock Clinic

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations was an outgrowth of the original parent body, the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, commonly referred to then as the Tavistock Clinic, which was founded in 1920 in Tavistock Square in London.

1 Names
2 History of the Tavistock
3 Focal point for psychoanalytical theory
4 Current activities
5 Notes
6 Further reading

[edit] Names

Many of the names given to Tavistock bodies have been used more than once throughout the history of the Tavistock. Thus the "Tavistock Clinic", once the common name for the parent body, now refers to part of a National Health Service trust, while the "Tavistock Institute", which once did research in many areas and was funded by many sources, is now a charity. The name "Tavistock Instutute of Medical Psychology", which was the name used for the original parent body, is now used to refer to an organization that grew out of that parent body but now specializes in couples relationships under the section name of the "Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships". This is a source of much confusion, though the facts can be ascertained from the historical account of the Tavistock by Eric Trist, one time chairman of the Institute. [6]

[edit] History of the Tavistock

The Institute was founded in 1946 by a group of key figures at the Tavistock Clinic including Henry Dicks, Leonard Browne, Ronald Hargreaves, John Rawlings Rees, Mary Luff and Wilfred Bion, with Tommy Wilson as chairman, funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Other well-known names that joined the group later were Jock Sutherland, John Bowlby, and Eric Trist.

Many of these founding members of the Tavistock Institute went on to play major roles in world affairs. Brigadier John Rawlings Rees became psychiatrist to Rudolph Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, along with Major Henry Dicks, while they were still attached to the Tavistock, and went on to be part of the three-man team that certified Hess fit for trial at the Nuremburg trials. [7] Post-war, Rees became first president of the World Federation for Mental Health. [8] ^[1]

Jock Sutherland became director of the new post-war Tavistock Clinic, when it was incorporated into the newly established British National Health Service in 1946. Ronald Hargreaves became deputy director of the World Health Organization. Tommy Wilson became chairman of the Tavistock Institute. [9] ^[2]

[edit] Focal point for psychoanalytical theory

Many well-known psychologists and psychiatrists have passed through the Tavistock Institute over the years, and it became known as the focal point in Britain for psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. Other names associated with the Tavistock are Melanie Klein, Carl Gustav Jung, J. A. Hadfield, Beckett, Charles Rycroft, Wilfred Bion, and R. D. Laing. [10] ^[3]

[edit] Current activities

According to its website, the Institute engages in educational, research, and consultancy work in the social sciences and applied psychology. Its clients are chiefly public sector organizations, including the European Union, several British government departments, and some private clients. The Institute has its own publishing house, and owns and edits Human Relations, the international social sciences journal. It also edits the journal Evaluation.

It offer a masters degree in "Advanced Organisational Consultation" jointly with City University, London. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Notes

^ Though the official WFMH website [1] does not list directors, a page on the site refers to the annual Rees lecture "in memory of Dr Mary Rees Hemingway, one of the early women psychiatrists in Britain, and among the first staff members at the Tavistock Clinic when it was founded in 1920." It goes on to say, "she was one of the founders of the WFMH, (her husband Dr John R. Rees was the first President and first Director.)" [2]
^ A history of the Institute can be found in The Social Engagement of Social Science: A Tavistock Anthology published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in three volumes between 1990 and 1997.
^ Laing came to the Tavistock Institute in 1956 at the invitation of Jock Sutherland, who was then director of the Tavistock Clinic, to train on a grant. [3] [4] His training, under Charles Rycroft, was at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. [5] He left in 1965, and went on to develop his own ideas, particularly with regard to schizophrenia, which he suggested might be a natural and understandable curative process, rather than a disease of the mind. His views of schizophrenia, based largely on the concept of family nexus, were explained in a series of famous books such as Sanity, Madness and the Family. Laing is often associated with the Antipsychiatry movement.