Tributes to Bob on His 80^TH Birthday

I worked actively with Bob for about 10 years between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, and we have kept in touch regularly ever since. I first met Bob around 1973 when I joined Henderson Hospital as a young research sociologist, at one of the first meetings of the newly formed Association of Therapeutic Communities (ATC). He was editing the ‘in house’ cyclostyled ATC newsletter, and although I can't remember in detail, we must have begun to talk about how we could develop the TC field further. At the time I had written a sociology thesis on TCs, discussing two aspects - the TC as a scientific innovation on the one hand, and on the other hand, TCs as a social movement for change in the mental health field (and beyond - as Maxwell Jones had already articulated). Indeed this was a heated focus for debate in the early days of the ATC, with radical, and often younger, staff wanting a social movement, and distrustful of the more academic and professionalizing approach from more established colleagues.

Anyhow, whichever of these was right, we reasoned that the TC field would be helpfully supported and extended by the development of a serious journal for the discussion of TC ideas. Indeed we knew from sociological work on both social movements and scientific innovation that both could benefit in this way. Bob duly formed and led a small group to explore this idea in the latter half of the 1970s, which culminated in the launch in 1980 of the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, with Human Sciences Press (New York), and Bob as editor.

This development was quite a while in gestation, and so meanwhile he and I put up the idea to Routledge and Kegan Paul of an edited book, designed to summarize the state of the TC field in the UK, with a wide range of contributions: Therapeutic Communities, Reflections and Progress, which we edited together, came out in 1979. And on the back of that, we put up a further idea to Routledge of a TC book series. In the event,