The William Inman Trust

I am here as Chairman of the William Inman Advisory Committee of the Council of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, which is supporting this conference, and also to give something of the background to this conference, and how it has come about that the British Psycho-Analytical Society should be collaborating with this distinguished hospital to discuss the topic which we have called The Mind's Eye. I will say something about a remarkable man, William Inman; but first I will describe psychoanalysis itself, and, since it can only be brief, my description will be incomplete. But perhaps it will do, at least to begin with.

Psychoanalysis is a term generally used to describe three things: a method of investigation; a body of theory; and a treatment—all interrelated. Historically, the method of investigation began when the neurological physician and anatomist Sigmund Freud, in 19th-century Vienna, discovered that his patients could, when lying down facing away from their physician, in a calm uninterrupted situation where they felt safe, gain access to and verbalise thoughts, feelings and memories that were not available to them in their ordinary lives, that were repressed or hidden on account of being unacceptable; and, frequently though not always, due to anxieties about sexual matters or violent feelings. Freud's genius was that he listened to his patients in this situation, and found a new level of understanding. He found that the apparently irrational or insignificant ideas or emotions that emerged from his relaxed patients could be seen to make links and patterns, that the responses to daily life could be seen to resonate with significant events in the patient's developmental history; and most importantly with the developing relationship to the doctor himself; and that these patterns held clues, and made links with the patient's psychopathology and symptomatology, both emotional and physical. The body of theory that is called psychoanalysis grew out of this method,