More than 70 years ago during the Second World War, what became known as the Northfield Experiments began in a southern suburb of Birmingham, England. By 1946 these experiments had ceased and the major participants had journeyed in different directions but carried with them new ideas, particularly in relation to group psychotherapy and more generally applied psychoanalysis. John Rickman, Wilfred Bion, Tom Main, Sigmund Foulkes, Harold Bridger, Patrick de Maré and others at the end of the war dispersed to create abundantly. Such creativity fertilized the development of the principles and practices of therapeutic communities, psychoanalytic group therapy, the application of an analytic understanding to organizations and more. This article includes a consideration of how practice was influenced from these origins. This contribution has as a background the author working for over two years at the Cassel Hospital early in the 1990s and more recently attending a conference in January 2018 conducted at Northfield or Hollymoor Hospital, as it was originally, and remains, known. It includes some personal reflections.
This paper is an account of the principles and practices of treatment offered at the Cassel Hospital, London, with a particular focus on the Inpatient Families Unit. The Cassel Hospital is an internationally renowned therapeutic community, the operation of which is based on psychoanalytic principles and which has operated within the British National Health Service for nearly 50 years. An account of the historical development of the hospital is given as well as a description of its structure and function. The following three innovative structures are elaborated: a complex network within which patients can develop, Cassel-style nursing care, and nurse-therapist supervision. Theoretical underpinnings are outlined, which together with two case studies facilitate an appreciation of the capacity of the therapeutic network to foster the successful treatment of a range of severely disordered individuals and families. Such treatment may approach a level perhaps otherwise unattainable and which is widely applicable in the public hospital and clinic settings in Australia.
The following is a selective account of the experience of conducting a weekly out-patient analytic group at the Cassel Hospital, London. Certain features of this experience are highlighted: in particular, the significance and value of a male and female co-therapy pair as conductors. Attention is drawn to the fundamentally reparative potential for damaged individuals in group psychotherapy. Such an experience may be valuable, especially in terms of it facilitating a greater degree of personality integration. Certain suggestions are made as to the prerequisites for such a psychotherapeutic approach. The observations may be useful in the provision of psychotherapy services in the Australian health care system.
This article begins with reference to a recent publication that has challenged some of the previously asserted origins and attributions of group analysis and psychoanalysis. Trigant Burrow was one of the earliest psychoanalysts and coined the term 'group analysis' in a certain context early in the 20th-century. The book edited by the Petegatos in Italy is then used as the basis of a study examining the nature of epistemology and its being intimately and necessarily associated with power: a politics of truth. What follows then is an exploration of the work of philosophers, in particular Foucault, and others, venturing across the realms of sociology, history, politics and psychoanalysis and the nature of discourse. It is demonstrated that the claims for truth in any sphere of human life need to be subject to healthy doubt and that the perversion of truth in groups is an ever present risk which we must all take responsibility to challenge.
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