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Following the first speaker, I too will give you a few biographical details. I was trained initially as a psychiatric social worker at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Moved by the encounter with psychiatric patients, I trained as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist. I am a member of the training committees of the Guild of Psychotherapists and the Philadelphia Association, and I have been practising and teaching the profession for over twenty years. Having worked in both public and private sectors, I would like to add to the conversation a large and very important area in this country: namely, the voluntary organizations. These often get no funding from the NHS, provide much-needed services for the public and charge extremely little, relying on the goodwill of the people who run them as a labour of love. The Philadelphia Association, for example, provides low-cost therapy as well as therapeutic communities. The Guild is amongst the pioneers in attaching trained therapists to GP centres. I have been involved in the UKSCP for many years, serving on council and various committees.
It is my work at Claybury Hospital in 1969 that provides the opening move for this brief talk. The hospital was run as a therapeutic community; we spent most of our time, staff and patients alike, in groups. On a Thursday afternoon in the admission ward, we all participated in the inevitable debate as to who thought they were ‘well enough’ to go home for the weekend. It was a lively and painful debate, as patients did truly believe that in order to go home they had to convince the rest of the ward. What they did not realize (and, I am afraid to say, nor did I for a long time) was that the consultant, who was naturally a very busy man, had popped into the office in his lunch break, and he and the ward sister had gone through the list and made the decision!