Psychodynamics of Therapy in a Residential Group

The Withymead Centre was established 24 years ago. It then consisted of a handful of people relating to two parent figures, and housed under one roof. Today the community has developed into an organism of approximately 40 people who live together in three houses, sharing one dining-hall and common room, and making use of studios for painting, modelling, music, movement and lectures. There is also gardening. Resident staff, patients, students, and observers share the communal life, their numbers being augmented by visiting therapists, out-patients, day users of the studios, and by weekend guests, who may be former patients or observers from many parts of the world. The guiding principle of all therapy is the analytical psychology of C. G. Jung.

The permanent clinical staff consists of a medical director who is a psychiatrist, two doctors, one of whom specializes in family problems, one resident and two non-resident psychotherapists, a non-resident educational psychologist (who is also a child-psychotherapist), a psychiatric social worker and another trained social worker, two resident registered nurses, one male and one female (the male being also a trained mental nurse), four visiting part-time nurses, a qualified teacher of young children who is also a child-therapist, and art therapists in painting, pottery, music and movement. The latter are non-resident. There is also a visiting teacher of French. If the younger patients are too ill to attend a local school, special tutors are engaged to help them in such studies as they can undertake. A full-time bursar controls the centre's administration.

On the domestic side, the staff consists of people who have sufficient psychological insight and understanding for them to help creatively in the general purpose of healing. In order to foster their co-operation and to keep them well in the picture, representatives of those in charge of the financial, housekeeping, domestic and structural care of the centre, meet