The Freud Memorial Professorship at University College London: A Review of its Development and Future

University College, the oldest and largest of the Schools and Colleges of the University of London, has a long and distinguished record of academic excellence and innovation which began with its foundation in 1826. The basic principle behind the foundation of UCL was that higher education in a far broader sense than existed elsewhere at the time should be available to all who could profit by it without any restrictions based on religion or class background. The College sought, furthermore, to provide study facilities not existing in the more traditional universities and to this end established the first professorial chairs in England in English, French, Italian, German, English Law, Jurisprudence, Political Economy and Geography as well as providing the beginning of English university teaching in chemistry, physics and scientific physiology.

In more modern times innovation continued with the founding of the first Faculty of Engineering in the United Kingdom and the pioneering of genetics, statistics, biochemistry, chemical engineering and phonetics as university disciplines.

It was with particular pleasure therefore that, adding to this list of 'firsts', the College in 1974 announced the establishment of a new visiting Chair, whose occupant would be known as the Freud Memorial Professor, and which was to be generously endowed by the Honourable Mr David Astor.

Mr Astor, then editor of The Observer newspaper, had developed an interest in psychoanalysis whilst at the University of Oxford and felt that students in general should have a chance to hear the discipline of psychoanalysis expounded by its most authentic exponents, psychoanalysts, since in most universities the subject was touched upon only by Professors of disciplines other than psychoanalysis. He wanted the actual views of Freud presented together with their ever changing contemporary application.

The College at that time was fortunate in already having a gifted Freudian scholar, Cecily de Monchaux,