Book Description

2020 marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the first patient being seen at the world-renowned Tavistock Clinic. Over the following year, the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust marked this centenary with a series of events celebrating its history and exploring issues of identity, relationships and society. This book is a collection of essays from these celebrations, which describe the historical and contemporary work of various departments and services, and consider how to draw on this heritage to provide valuable responses to current and future challenges. The twelve chapters describe the organisation's thinking, educational and clinical work with children, young people and their parents, adults, organisations and wider society, documenting the influence of clinicians such as Balint, Bick, Bowlby, Garland, Glover, Malan and Pailthorpe. The authors outline the development of services for people who have experienced trauma, neurodiversity, complex and enduring mental health problems, and paraphilias or forensic behaviours. They address issues such as gender identity, the impact of couple relationship difficulties on parenting, systemic racism within the psychotherapeutic professions and the societal health inequalities revealed by COVID-19. The book concludes with a chapter exploring leadership and followership in organisations and how this can be applied to work in the NHS. This book was originally published as two special issues of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.