Canadian
biographer seeks information on Northfield Author Paul Potts
Back in
the mid 1990s Mark Holloway, biographer of Norman Douglas and friend
of Canadian-born Soho poet Paul Potts, "caught a train to London
from his home in Salisbury, got on a plane and flew to Vancouver and
then proceeded to track me down..." writes Leigh Hirst, in a
query to the Archive and Study Centre. "He was in his late
seventies and legally blind." He arrived "unannounced and
essentially unknown" with "one small briefcase" as
luggage. In the background, back in England, was an unfinished
biography of Paul Potts. The relationship between Holloway and Hirst developed, centred on the
biography of Potts; and following Holloway's death in 2004 his papers
and the task of completing the biography went to Hirst, who would very much like to hear from anyone who knew Paul Potts, or can
shed any light on his extraordinary life and career.
Paul
Potts was one of the community of artists and writers who passed
through Birmingham's Northfield Military Psychiatric Hospital during
World War II - so many, and so distinctive, that writer Raynor
Heppenstall joked there should be an Old Northfieldians tie for them.
The story of the Northfield Experiments, as the work there came to
be called, has been told by Dr. Tom Harrison in Bion,
Rickman, Foulkes and the Northfield Experiments: Advancing on a
Different Front published by Jessica Kingsley in 2000.
In his
magisterial Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia: the bizarre life of
writer, actor, Soho dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross (Dewi-Lewis Publishing, 2003) - Maclaren-Ross was another Northfield
author - , Paul Willetts describes the
"English-educated Paul Potts, inveterate scrounger, fervent
left-winger and self-styled "People's Poet From The Canadian
Prairies". " who "had been ignominiously discharged
from the army, though he still dressed in a tatty army-issue
greatcoat which flapped open to reveal a stained red shirt, worn with
sandals and black corduroy trousers." (p. 150) Augustus Young
calls Potts "the secular saint of self-effacement", and in the
New Partisan Robert Latona refers to Potts' Dante Called You Beatrice
as "a book that I think finishes in a dead heat with Berlioz’s
Memoirs in presenting a convincing prose simulation of the
self-lacerating emotional delirium that comes from being in love with
someone who doesn’t love you back. "
Ronald
Caplan speaks of Potts as "moving among the elite literati and
selling his poems on “penny each” broadsides, an act he
considered a “sacrament.” He was a man of rare attentions, brave
and tender, who wrote unfashionably in his time: a kind of
straightforward poetry and prose about love, human kindness, decency,
hope for the species, and peace" and publishes what Robert
Latona calls "a conscience-scalding photographic portrait of
Potts during his last days on earth" taken by Christopher Barker
"in which the addled, rag-clad poet evokes a penitent St Jerome
as Goya might have depicted him." (The photograph)
A short poem by Potts, "To Ezra Pound", is available in a podcast, read by Paul Tyler.
Did you know Paul Potts? Have any information about him? Or about other Northfield artists and writers? Please get in
touch.
Ludlow based Castle View Books in association with the Institute for the History and Work of Therapeutic Environments has published “An Obscure Philanthropist” a biography of Frank Mathews, 1871-1948, by Dr Tony Rees.
Frank Mathews will be remembered by many as the leader of Birmingham’s Cripples Union from 1899 and the founder of the Cripples Hospital, now the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, whose centenary is celebrated this year.
After leaving the Union in 1922 he went on to found charities working for children with heart problems, then the biggest cause of death, and children with nervous and behavioural problems, pioneering new treatment regimes for both.
Much of this work was done in the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, where children were sent to local hospitals to recuperate or put under the care of foster parents on small farms.
Two years before his death he bought Bodenham Manor, just north of Hereford, which became, from its opening in 1950, a successful and influential therapeutic community for children under pioneering child care figure David Wills OBE.
This is the story of a man born into a middle class family but orphaned in childhood, who devoted his life to sick children, many from the poorest families. He inspired support from cabinet ministers and industrialists, factory workers, the parents of the children he helped and, later in their lives, the children themselves.
The story, written by someone who knew him, is told largely in his own words.
It brings back a world, largely forgotten after 50 years of the welfare state, when life for the many could be, and often was, terribly hard; but also a world of innovation in family and child care theory and practice, much of which has passed into use as best practice, and some of which is still to be re-discovered.
Frank Mathews' archives, and the archives of the Birmingham Society for the Care of Invalid and Nervous Children, are held in the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre, in Toddington, Gloucestershire.
Too rarely do people like Frank reach out to us as rounded characters and too rarely can we truly appreciate their work and their legacies. Therein lies the importance of this biography. Frank Mathews made a difference. He changed lives and we can understand him, his calling and his work all the better thanks to Tony's assiduous research and thoughtful writing."
- Professor Carl Chinn, MBE, School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham
The 12th Annual Maxwell Jones Lecture Given 28 November 2008 at the HENDERSON HOSPITAL 2 Homeland Drive Sutton Surrey, SM2 5LT
TITLE: “Therapeutic Communities: - a natural impulse or evolving technology” LECTURER: David Kennard RESPONDANT: Penny Campling
AND, for the first time,
THE FULL DISCUSSION FROM THE AUDIENCE
With very many thanks to Diana Menzies and all of the people at the Henderson Hospital, for organising and recording the event, and for getting all the necessary permissions; and to everyone who spoke and who has has given their permission for their contribution to be broadcast.
The full Event is now available on RadioTC International, at:
It is with great pleasure that the Committee and Fellows of
the Institute for the History and Work of Therapeutic Evironments (IHWTE)
announce and warmly welcome the appointment of two new IHWTE Fellows, Dimitris
Vonofakos and Prof. Michael E. Gorman.
DIMITRIS VONOFAKOS is a social researcher with a background
in psychology and further studies in psychoanalytic theory and methods. He took
his BA (hons)in 1999 atThe American College of Thessaloniki, Greece;
he was awarded a first in 2001 for his MA thesis on"Psychiatric Asylums and Community Care:
a Psychoanalytic Perspective" inthe Centre for Psycho-Analytic Studies, University of Essex; and his PhD
dissertation, supervised by Prof. Bob Hinshelwood in the Centre for
Psychoanalystic Studies, is "Differentiating Defence-Related and
Work-Related Functioning in Social Defence Systems: Observing the Unconscious
Cultures of Psychiatric Organisations".
Currently, Dimitris is Qualitative Data Officer in ESDS
Qualidata, part of the UK Data Archive, University or Essex, working on the
digitisation and dissemination of qualitative data for use in secondary
analysis. He is also involved in the preparation of Research Methods Teaching
Packs that are used by instructors to orientate and familiarise students with qualitative
research methods using examples from archived material. His research interests
are in the psychoanalytic study of social and organisational dynamics, the
historical development of psychoanalytic theory and the applications of
psychoanalytic methods in the social sciences. He has presented extensively in
international conferences and is a national representative of OPUS
(Organisation Promoting the Understanding of Society) for Greece where he has
been running annual, psycho-social research groups (Listening Posts) that focus
on the psychological experiences of national citizens.
MICHAEL E. GORMAN is Professor in Science, Technology &
Society at the University of Virginia,
with a doctorate in Social Psychology, with extensive teaching, supervision and
research experience in psychology, and with particular expertise in cognitive
and social aspects of invention and design.
A patron of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust's
2004-2005 Appeal, Dr. Gorman is currently pursuing research in therapeutic
interventions with 'difficult' and 'disturbed'children. He is focusing on the work of A. Jean Ayres, an academic and
practicing occupational therapist and educational psychologist who founded the
Center for the Study of Sensory Integrative Dysfunction in California.
She pioneered an approach to a range of childhood learning problems called
Sensory Integration.
According to Gorman,
''Ayres' discovered that a large set of these 'difficult'
children were frustrated by their inability to coordinate sensory and motor
activities at a basic level, which of course made them appear oppositional. She
therefore was working from different assumptions about the problem, and also
evolved therapeutic methods distinct from those used by behaviorists and
psychoanalysts-though like all therapists, she was a bricolage artist, willing
to borrow any technique that appeared like it might help a child.''
He goes on to say
''Ayres' work represented a contrast to the top-down
paradigm used in OT, where the therapist or teacher was in charge and told the
child what to do. Ayres instead believed
that, "The child must organize his own brain: the therapist can only
provide the milieu conducive to evoking the drive to do so".''
She devised therapeutic tools, techniques, and environments
which appear to have been both successful and influential, and Dr. Gorman is
pursuing historical, oral historical and analytic research into Ayres' design
and innovation process. Research questions include:
"Where
didAyres get ideas for artifacts?
"What was her
model of 'therapeutic environment', and how did her models of the therapeutic
environment change over time?
"What kind of
evidence did she use to determine what worked and what didn't work during the
design process?
"What was the
role of the sensory integration community in adapting and improving the
technologies?"
According to Prof. Gorman, he has become an IHWTE Fellow in
order to draw on the support and expertise of the Institute and its Fellows, to
broaden his understanding of the British models and approach to this area, and
to support and participate in the work and development of the IHWTE as such.
FURTHER CONGRATULATIONS TO DIMITRIS, who has been awarded an IHWTE/PETT Research
Grant to be carried out in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies on:
"Early influences in the work of Wilfred Bion, with a
particular focus on his association with John Rickman"
An investigation of early influences in the work of Wilfred
Bion, with a particular focus on his association with John Rickman, building on
recent publications (e.g., Tom Harrison (2000), Bion, Rickman, Foulkes and the
Northfield Experiments: Advancing on a Different Front; Pearl King (2003), No
Ordinary Psychoanalyst: The Exceptional Contributions of John Rickman),
exploring Bion's formative years in 1930s and 1940s, mapping out early
influences on his later work on group dynamics and individual psychopathology. Special
attention will be drawn to Bion's relationship and professional collaborations
with John Rickman, starting from their analytic relationship, the interventions
in Wharncliffe and NorthfieldHospitals,
as well as the ground-breaking work with leaderless groups. The final piece
will form part of a co-edited book by Dr. Nuno Torres and Professor Bob
Hinshelwood, tracing the development of the work of Wilfred Bion.
THE INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY ANDWORK OF THERAPEUTIC ENVIRONMENTS is a
designated research and study centre of the University
of Birmingham in partnership with
the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive, Research and Study Centre, and
based at the Planned Environment Therapy Trust, Church
Lane, Toddington, Cheltenham,
Glos. GL54 5DQ
THE IHWTE FELLOWSHIP is a developing honorary project, the
aim being to engage exciting scholars, researchers and practitioners in helping
the Institute for the History and Work of Therapeutic Environments to grow in
its work, and to find ways that the Institute and fellow Fellows can help one
another.Fellows are encouraged to join
in IHWTE meetings, and to take an active part in decision-making and
committees. For further information, or if you are interested in joining with
the IHWTE project as a potential Fellow, please contact the Dr. Craig Fees,
Honorary Director, IHWTE, craig@ihwte.org.uk, or see http://www.ihwte.org.uk.
FELLOWS CURRENTLY INCLUDEProf. Michael E. Gorman, Dr. David Millard, Kevin Polley, Dr A.I. Rees,
Anthony Slater, Dr. Jonathon Toms, Dimitris Vonofakos, Dr. Andrea Wheeler, and
Visiting Fellow from Northwestern University in the United States, Teri Chettiar
Philippa Braidwood, Head of Communications at the South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust would now very much like to do an article on the concert for the Trust's staff magazine, "Trustwide", and would "be very pleased to hear from anyone who was there or knows about it to hear their recollections." She goes on to say "If anyone has a copy of the residents' magazine 'Chicken Quill' where it was written about at the time it would be good to have that too" - possibly for re-printing.
If you can help, Philippa's contact details are
Philippa Braidwood Head of Communications South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust Trust Headquarters Springfield University Hospital 61 Glenburnie Road London SW17 7DJ Direct line: 0208 682 6477 Switch: 0208 682 6000 ext 6477 Email: philippa.braidwood@swlstg-tr.nhs.uk
Do you have old copies of "Chicken Quill"? - or anything else relating to the Henderson Hospital?
They would be very welcome in the Archive and Study Centre collections!
