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John Sutherland was Medical Director of the Tavistock Clinic between 1947 and 1968, and founder of the Scottish Institute of Human Relations.
Jock, as he was widely known, was the youngest of an Edinburgh family of eight. A studious child, he first read Chemistry, and then Psychology at Edinburgh University.
There he came under the influence of Ronald Fairbairn. Determined to become a psychoanalyst, he took his Medical degree at Glasgow University. At the outbreak of War in 1939 he joined the staff of a hospital for the expected psychiatric war casualties, and it was as a psychiatrist that he in 1942 joined a team of colleagues, predominantly from the Tavistock Clinic, to develop the War Office Selection Boards for Officers in World War II. He played a prominent part, not only in his actual contribution to the design, planning, and methodology, but in demonstrating significant leadership and influence within the professional/military group itself. This later lead to his being chosen as Director of the Tavistock Clinic, a post he held for twenty-one years . With his war-time colleagues, among whom were Henry Dicks, John Bowlby, and Wilfred Bion, he led the Clinic into its preeminent national and international position in psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy and related health endeavours. In 1948, he and his colleagues decided that the Clinic should play its part in the new National Health Service, and until his retirement in 1968 he strove successfully to establish the Clinic in its unique combination of postgraduate training and clinic practice — for children, adolescents, families, and adults — in group as well as individual treatment.
In 1968, in recognition of these services, the Queen bestowed upon him the CBE.
It was after the war that, while fulfilling his leadership role, conducting clinical work himself both for individuals and for groups, he continued his psychoanalysis training. As a member of the British Psycho-Analytical Society he played an equally pro