Tansley's Psychoanalytic Network: An episode out of the Early History of Psychoanalysis in England

Abstract

The paper traces the psychoanalytic networks of the English botanist, A.G. Tansley, a patient of Freud's (1922-1924), whose detour from ecology to psychoanalysis staked out a path which became emblematic for his generation. Tansley acted as the hinge between two networks of men dedicated to the study of psychoanalysis: a Cambridge psychoanalytic discussion group consisting of Tansley, John Rickman, Lionel Penrose, Frank Ramsey, Harold Jeffreys and James Strachey; and a network of field scientists which included Harry Godwin, E. Pickworth Farrow and C.C. Fagg. Drawing on unpublished letters written by Freud and on unpublished manuscripts, the authors detail the varied life paths of these psychoanalytic allies, focusing primarily on the 1920s when psychoanalysis in England was open to committed scientific enthusiasts, before the development of training requirements narrowed down what counted as a psychoanalytic community.

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PASSION OF J.D. BERNAL IN 1920s CAMBRIDGE

“…Just as there is a surprising link at the heart of 1920s radical economics between psychology and economics, so we see a comparable link between psychology and mathematics, a radical psychologism, also found in Ramsey's reflections and in Penrose's research projects (Cameron & Forrester, 2000). Bernal spells out why Freud's new psychology is the era's foundational discipline:…”

1919: Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Cambridge and London — Myers, Jones and Maccurdy

“…The institutions of Cambridge closed up for entirely different reasons, stemming from its new Statutes and from the new financial regime -the era in science of government and foundation funding, a regime from which psychoanalysis was excluded -or excluded itself. But for a brief period of fluidity after the Great War, not only was there a psychoanalytic network based in Cambridge (Cameron & Forrester 2000), linking to Vienna directly (the Stracheys, Rickman, Tansley …”

Introducing psychoanalytic geographies

“…This being said, there were perhaps a few more flirtations with psychoanalysis by geographers prior to the late-1980s than are usually acknowledged: think of C.C. Fagg's dalliance in the 1920s with Freudian interpretations of landscape, including some correspondence with Freud (Cameron and Forrester 2000;Matless 1998: 99-100;Stoddart 1986); think of D.M. Evans's (1978) borrowings from Freud, Buber and Marx to theorize the fantasies of 'purity' and 'harmony' of the 'schizophrenic' suburb, complete with their pathological underside played out behind closed doors; or think of the research of Peter Jüngst et al (especially Jüngst and Medar 1986), a German geographer long influenced by psychoanalysis, who has explicitly mobilized a methodology of 'psychodramas' in his attempt to discern 'a grammer of landscape' present in the micro-scale relationships between people, 'scene and space '.…”