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