Spent the day here at the Archive with Ruth Crocket, Richard Crocket's daughter. (Who was Richard Crocket? Founding Director of the Ingrebourne Centre therapeutic community, and founding member of the Association of Therapeutic Communities? See brief biographical article). Going through trunks of material which came out of the house in Oxford after Richard died, and stored here until Ruth had had a chance to go through and set aside material not intended for deposit. Not so much of the latter, as it turns out, at least on first viewing; but while going through objects and manuscripts some interesting and exciting things emerge. A plan for a cottage sharing scheme which he realised later is sketched out as early as 1960, a working out of psychotherapeutic community processes in an everyday environment. Tuning forks and a variety of knee hammers from his neurological testing days. A reconnection letter from Bonn, immediately after the Second World War, illustrating in one life the immense destructiveness of the Nazi regime on German citizens who did not wholeheartedly support it. Material on his visits to Germany before the war, as a boy. Personal and family correspondence, pre-war and post. Research material from his time as tutor in psychiatry at the University of Leeds, 1950-1954. Drawings and paintings. Published and unpublished writing. An immense amount of material, now waiting to be catalogued.

Among the manuscripts there is a four page sketch that begins:

"On the use of the word 'enemy'

Sutherland [this will be his friend and colleague Jock Sutherland, with whom he trained before the war] remarked on Wednesday that the question 'What would your worst enemy say about you if asked?', included in that battery of tests given to officer candidates, elicted the reply "I have no enemies" in a moderate proportion of cases. Miller has therefore modified his question to 'What would a severe critic say about you.' But Bion concluded that the question ought to be left unaltered as, he said, a man without enemies was immature and not qualified for officer status.

It is a matter involving a delicate nuance of meaning..."

The whole of the manuscript is reproduced with Ruth's permission in pdf format here

2008.023 Wooden sign


March 2004: The old sign on the right replaced by the new, on the left

Wooden sign? (a mere wooden sign...?)

20th anniversary Mini-Celebration 1.

Back in the cold wet winter of 1997 the old school sign which stood on the road for many years was taken down and painted over. "Archive and Study Centre" was printed in seven sections in large letters on A4 photocopy paper using the old Atari computer and laser printer, cut up and glued to the painted board with exterior wood glue.

The Atari was the Archive's first computer, bought secondhand well before the computer wars assigned Atari to the shelves of history and Evesham Micros, from which it had originally been bought, moved from the corner of Bridge and Mill Streets in the lower side of Evesham to the Four Pools Industrial Estate on the edge (what a friendly outfit they were! servicing Ataris well after the world at large had abandoned them to obsolescence) before their final move to the new purpose built enterprise estate on the outskirts of town, from which the whole world came to know of them.

Several coats of yacht varnish over several nights while the children were in bed, and computer-printed paper became a temporary sign, designed to last perhaps a year. Bolted firmly to a post in the wake of a spate of local vandalism, the sign stood on the right hand side of the entrance drive for the next six and a half years. Replaced in March 2004 by a commercially printed metal sign, it was moved to the left of the entrance where it continued to guide people in for the next four years. Handmade, warm and reliable beyond original expectation, embodying much of the history and ethos of the Archive and Study Centre, it was finally retired, ten and a bit years after first going into temporary service, in the June of this year. 2008.

In 2009 the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre will celebrate its 20th year. Over the next six months we plan a series of mini-celebrations of the work and history of the Centre, largely online, and invite anyone with memories and recollections to share them. Visions of the future? Share those as well. Keep in touch with updates here at http://news.pettarchiv.org.uk/

***
The Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre is the only facility of its kind in the world devoted to therapeutic communities and environments.

It is

It holds over

It has

It has associated onsite residential accommodation, and seminar and conference facilities, as part of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust's Barns Centre;

It is the seat of the Institute for the History and Work of Therapeutic Environments, a research and study centre of the University of Birmingham.

2008.021 Photograph, "Eaton Hill Therapeutic Community" taken and sent by Geraldine Curtis



Eaton Hill in Derbyshire had two children in its care at the beginning of 1948, when it opened as a children's home. From 1981 it began to develop a specifically therapeutic culture "providing a high standard of care, treatment and perseverance when working with traumatised and damaged young people who exhibit various forms of anti-social behaviour. Many have a history of failure or rejection in other community and residential placements", according to its entry in the directory of the Charterhouse Group of Therapeutic Communities. It closed it doors on September 14, 2004.

The entry describes the house as "attractively furnished and decorated to give a feeling of homely warmth and comfort", and "set in three acres of parkland surrounded by woods and pasture....the physical surroundings of the house and grounds provide an environment which helps our residents feel secure and valued; a place where their fears and anxieties can be identified and resolved." It goes on to say "Together with the overall environment and therapeutic culture, we aim to give a clear and overt message about individual behaviour, group expectations, shared responsibilities, the need for warmth and self-expression, and the value of the individual - powerful factors in stimulating personal growth, enabling development towards maturity."

Geraldine Curtis teaches art to adults and piano, lives locally, and has a blog   which mentions the therapeutic community, and through which the Archive made contact. She has taken a set of photographs of Eaton Hill, and has made them available on Flickr. 

The cover of the March 2003 issue of the Joint Newsletter, number 7  (http://www.pettarchiv.org.uk/jointnewsletter/7.pdf) carries the face of Julian Maclaren-Ross, cult English author and resident for a time in Northfield Military Psychiatric Hospital, a rare witness of the Northfield Experiments from the side of the client. Inside the issue is published a short story he wrote for the Northfield patients' magazine, found among Northfield pioneer S.H. Foulkes' papers at the Wellcome Library (http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTL039939.html )

Paul Willetts, who wrote the excellent biography - "Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia: The Bizarre Life of Julian Maclaren-Ross" published by Dewi Lewis Publishers in 2003 - has brought out a collection of Maclaren-Ross's "Selected Letters" (Black Spring Press, London, 2008. ISBN 978-0-948238-3). Sandwiched between a letter of 17 February 1943 ("Off to hospital Birmingham tomorrow") and 10 May 1943 when he was returned to his unit ("at a moment's notice and without seeing Major Backus [his therapist] before leaving...". Thank goodness all THAT's changed) and eventually discharged there are eighteen letters by him written from "Military Hospital/Northfields/Birmingham". There are also two extensive letters in an appendix, written by Maclaren-Ross's girlfriend Scylla Yates at the time describing her visit to Northfield and discussions with Dr. Backus.

Northfield, of course, is where the term "therapeutic community" first becomes anchored in British psychiatry, through Tom Main's famous paper in the 1946 Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic. (Haven't seen it? The ATC Administration Team still has copies of the special edition of Therapeutic Communities in which they were reprinted. 01242 620077 or post@therapeuticcommunities.org. The Archive and Study Centre has a copy of the original, picked up from a cardboard box full of ephemera in an Oxford secondhand book store, just up the road from the rail station, priced 50p, about fifteen years ago).

Personal accounts of life in a therapeutic community today are rare enough, even in a time of blogs. How special an articulate patient's comments, in letters to his publisher, written sixty five years ago, in the complex dawn of the history of therapeutic community?

"Julian Maclaren-Ross: Selected Letters", edited by Paul Willetts, published by Black Spring Press, London, at £9.95. £6.56 from Amazon.uk