You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The establishment of The Bridge Foundation represents the culmination of a number of thoughts and events whose sources date back many years. At the same time, it marks the place and provides the framework for the beginning of something quite new and unpredictable — a sort of meeting of the ways from which various new paths or streams can develop. The foundation takes its name partly from its physical location close to the Suspension Bridge built by Brunel in Bristol; and partly from the functions it is meant to encompass, geographical and otherwise.
It has long been a matter for comment and some disquiet that almost all the resources for the practice and training of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom are in London, and most of these in very specific areas of London, such as N.W.1 and N.W.3! Travel two hours along the motorway in any direction and, with some notable exceptions, you might be in another world, one in which most of those who have heard of psychoanalysis at all regard the whole subject with great misgivings, if not outright hostility — something mysterious and alien. There are interesting changes in the air, I think, but the gaps are still remarkable.
Returning to England in 1967 after some years in the USA, I was struck by this and by the odd distribution and use of psychotherapy resources in general in the UK. In London, those who were in any kind of therapy were likely to be in full psychoanalysis four or five times a week; and outside of London, there were virtually no psychotherapy resources at all, apart from those in child guidance clinics. Short of landing up in mental hospital, there seemed little notion that anyone might have emotional difficulties, or might need help from people