Early British Psychoanalysis and the Medico-Psychological Clinic

‘Sentimental Follies’ or ‘Instruments of Tremendous Uplift’? reconsidering women's same-sex relationships in interwar Britain

“…39 Before the outbreak of the war a Medico-Psychological Clinic had been established in Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury, drawing on an eclectic mixture of contemporary theories. 40 Sexology in the UK was initially defined as 'sex psychology', as in the title of Havelock Ellis's seven-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1898 -1928) and the name of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, which pursued a very eclectic approach to the elucidation of sexual matters. 41 Psychoanalysis was making some, slow, inroads, and was gaining ground by the 1920s.…”

Charles Rycroft and the Making of an Independent Psychoanalyst

“…Before receiving the final certificate of proficiency, a student was required to present a thesis on the subject connected with his or her work at the Clinic. (Boll, 1962, p. 316) The fact that nonphysicians were also allowed to train did not endear the Medico-Psychological Clinic to Jones (Raitt, 2004), who, unlike Freud, considered lay analysts equivalent to dilettantes (Kohon, 1986;Rayner, 1991). If we wish to interpret Jones's prejudice in a positive light, we might argue that he was concerned about the danger that an analyst's lack of training on the clinical level (the clinical being, for Jones, synonymous with the medical) might pose to both patient and analyst.…”

“…Edward was no stranger to analytical practices that might be termed "colonizing": During a 1965 interview with Roazen (2000), Edward recalled the "missionary zeal" with which his brother, shortly after returning from a few months of analysis with Abraham in Berlin (1921), banned any form of treatment other than strictly analytical from the Medico-Psychological Clinic (p. 32). This move set off a chain of events that in 1922 led to the closing of the Clinic as well as to the close of a unique chapter in the history of the treatment of mental disorders (Boll, 1962;Raitt, 2004).…”

Karl Abraham: Life And Work, A Biography by AnnaBentinck van Schoonheten. Published by Karnac, London, 2016; xxiii + 432 pp, £35 hardback

“…Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten does little to address this, despite her discussion of the Glovers and Alix Strachey. She bases her account of James Glover and his relation to the Brunswick Square Clinic on the Rundbriefe rather than the standard study by Susan Raitt (), which is not listed in her bibliography. Although she notes that a large number of future British analysts gravitated to Berlin as part of their informal training, she does not expand on who they were or what they took back with them.…”