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These companion books bring together the writings of John Rickman on psychoanalysis and on applications in a range of contexts before, during, and after the Second World War, applying his understanding to group and societal dynamics, as well as religious and moral beliefs. Pearl King has contributed an informative introduction, with the title, ‘The rediscovery of John Rickman and his work’. Together these volumes expose first of all a delightfully straightforward and perceptive writer and second a champion of a tradition of applied psychoanalysis, which has suffered over time but continues in one form or another, not least through the work of OPUS.
For many modern practitioners of psychoanalytically informed group relations work and systems psychodynamic thinking about groups and organisations, Rickman is probably remembered best as the other psychiatrist with whom Bion worked in the first Northfield experiment - a period of work lasting six weeks at the military hospital in Birmingham and credited with being hugely influential in the development of group relations as a management as well as a therapeutic tool, with an influence on clinical institutions as therapeutic communities and work organisations of all kinds as having an unconscious.
In Pearl King's account, Rickman was certainly an interesting historical figure, a Quaker and a pacifist (serving in The Friends War Victims Relief Service in Russia in the First World War when Bion was commanding tanks in France) who was persuaded to join the army as a Major in the Second World War specifically so that he and Bion could work together as menbers of the group of psychiatrists and psychologists who contributed in several original ways to the needs of a society at war. As he said, ‘It is odd … that a longish Quaker line should throw up one who is introducing innovations into Army training.’