Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

The Trust was originally founded as the Tavistock Clinic on 27 September 1920^[2] by Hugh Crichton-Miller.^[3] Its original premises were at 51 Tavistock Square, which is where it took its name from^[4]. When it was founded, it had two departments, namely adults and children. Teaching and lecturing to other professional audiences also began almost as soon as the clinic opened^[5].

By the end of the 1920s, the Tavistock Clinic needed to expand, so it became incorporated as a charity: The Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in 1929^[6]. Initially, this was to raise money for an extension, but by 1932 it had outgrown its premises in Bloomsbury. The Tavistock Clinic obtained a lease for a disused mews on the corner of Torrington Place and Malet Place by University College^[7]. This allowed for specialised clinical rooms with one-way mirrors as well as a lecture theatre that allowed the Clinic to develop an educational offering. In 1932 it was thanks to JA Hadfield that the Tavistock Clinic first got university recognition for its Diploma in Psychological Medicine from the University of London^[8]. Being a charity meant that the Clinic could also apply for grants and in 1936 it won its first research fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation - ATM Wilson studied the peptic ulcer in its psychological and social aspects^[9].

During World War 2 the Tavistock Clinic relocated to a temporary site in Hampstead after its central London sites were destroyed in the Blitz. Many of the staff took positions in the military, the then Director, J R Rees, was appointed consultant psychiatrist to the Army at Home and made responsible for the mental health of approximately three million people^[10].

After the war, the Tavistock Clinic joined the NHS as a founding organisation in 1948, with its staff being the first to be paid by the new NHS from April 1948.

The immediate era after the war was a period of huge growth and innovation for the Tavistock Clinic. Wilfred Bion took charge of the Clinic and prepared it to join the NHS. He established the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) in 1948^[11], which embodied a multi-disciplinary and integrative approach to the behavioural sciences. As this new organisation could not join the NHS with the Clinic, it was incorporated as a separate company. In 1948, Enid Balint founded the Family Discussion Bureau with Lily Pincus and Alison Lyons (later renamed the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute and now known as Tavistock Relationships, which still operates under the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology).

Most importantly, John Bowlby joined the Tavistock Clinic after World War 2 and took charge of the Children's Department^[12]. If Crichton-Miller planted the seed of talking therapies, it was John Bowlby who provided the scientific framework. It was at the Tavistock Clinic that he began the work that would transform our understanding of human development: Attachment Theory, which explains how bonds between infants and caregivers shape everything that follows – it now underpins virtually every form of contemporary psychotherapy. By this measure, Bowlby is the most influential psychoanalyst of all time.

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust was formed in 1994, when the Tavistock Clinic merged with the neighbouring Portman Clinic in Fitzjohns Avenue.^[13][14] The Portman specialises in areas of forensic psychiatry, including the treatment of addictive, sociopathic and criminal behaviours and tendencies.^[15]

It successfully became the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in 2006, one of the first mental health trusts to do so.

It owes its name to its original location in Tavistock Square in central London. When it moved later to larger premises, it took its name with it. Although Hugh Crichton-Miller was a psychiatrist who developed psychological treatments for shell-shocked soldiers during and after the First World War, clinical services were always destined for both children and adults.^[16][17]. The clinic's first patient was a child. From its foundation, it was also clear that to offer free treatment to all who need it meant that the Tavistock Clinic needed to generate income by providing training to clinical professionals who could eventually help people across the UK and beyond. The clinical staff were also researchers. These principles remain influential to this day.^[18]

Following its foundation, the Tavistock Clinic developed a focus on preventive psychiatry, expertise in group relations – including army officer selection, social psychiatry, and action research. There was an openness to different streams of research and thought, as, for instance, the famous series of lectures given by the Swiss psychiatrist and one-time collaborator of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, which were attended by doctors, churchmen and members of the public, including H. G. Wells and Samuel Beckett.^[19]

Its staff, who were still mainly unpaid honorary psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers, were interested in researching and consulting to leadership within the armed forces. The staff also offered treatment to members of the civilian population who might be traumatised by the prospect of a further world war, which could bring bombing of cities, evacuation of children and the shocks of loss and bereavement.

After the Second World War, the Tavistock Clinic benefited from the Northfield Hospital experience and from the arrival of talented professionals from Europe, many fleeing Nazi persecution.^[20] In 1948, it became a leading clinic within the newly created National Health Service. At this point, its education and training services were managed separately by the Tavistock Institute for Medical Psychology, which was also the umbrella for the Tavistock Institute, involved in social action research and thinking about group relations and organisational dynamics, and for work with marital couples. The clinic was managed on a democratic model by a professional committee and further developed its distinct focus on multi-disciplinary and community-centred work. At the Clinic's centenary in 2020, many post-war Tavistock staff contributed personal chapters in "The Tavistock Century" (edited by Margot Waddell and Sebastian Kraemer, Phoenix Publishing House https://firingthemind.com/product/9781912691715/)

In 1994, the Tavistock Clinic joined with the Portman Clinic to become the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust.^[15] In 2006 the Trust acquired NHS Foundation Trust status and become the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.^[27] It is an active member of UCL Partners, the Academic Health Service Centre located in North London.

Paul Burstow, a former Minister of State for Care and Support in the Cameron-Clegg coalition government, became Chair of the Trust in November 2015.^[28]

Over the years many hundreds of staff members, at all levels, have contributed to the work of this institution. This list is merely representative of some of the lasting contributors to the different fields encompassed by the Clinic.

In line with Hugh Crichton-Miller's original vision for clinics to be set up in communities across the country, his dream was not realised in his 'native' Scotland for another 50 years.^[81] However, with Jock Sutherland's return to Edinburgh in 1968, he became the catalyst for the formation of an organisation modelled on the London centre, albeit on a smaller scale. The Scottish Institute of Human Relations (SIHR), now defunct, was constituted as a charitable educational institution in Edinburgh in the early 1970s. Eventually a branch was opened in Glasgow. The 'MacTavi', as it was sometimes fondly called, worked closely with the National Health Service in Scotland and provided psychoanalytic training and courses for professionals in the health and educational systems and beyond.^[82] It also guided adults and children into treatment for the forty years of its operation.^[83] SIHR was finally dissolved in 2013 and its centres closed down. Some of its functions were taken over by a number of other organisations, specifically psychoanalytic training has become the remit of the Scottish Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (SAPP).