The Tavistock Clinic, or Tavi as it is more colloquially known, was founded  on 27 September in 1920 by Hugh Crichton-Miller. In the beginning it was the home of a small band of seven doctors. In addition to Hugh Crichton-Miller, the Honorary Director, there was: Dr JA Hadfield, Dr Mary..Read More

In 1922, Grace Pailthorpe began her study of women offenders in Birmingham Prison under Britain’s first criminologist, Dr M. Hamblin-Smith. This work was later extended to Holloway Prison in London and other institutions.

In 1928 the London Child Guidance Training Centre was established by Dr William Moodie, of the Maudsley Hospital, with funding from the Commonwealth Fund of New York. A short history of child guidance in England: long-read

In 1929 the London Child Guidance Training Centre (CGTC) obtained premises at the Tudor Lodge, 1 Canonbury Place, Islington and opened their clinic in July 1929 with Lady Lawrence as the president and Cyril Burt as the vice president. Dr. William Moodie was its first director and Lucy Fildes its..Read More

In 1930 the Tavistock Clinic changed its name to the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. The name change was part of a strategy to move more into the field off education.

When the ISTD was founded, a number of important and influential Vice-Presidents were recruited who could guarantee the status of the society and attract public attention. Early Vice-Presidents included: Professor Alfred Adler, Professor (later Sir) Cyril Burt, The Countess De la Warr, Havelock Ellis, Professor Sigmund Freud, Cardinal Griffin, Sir..Read More

In a meeting at Dr Jensen’s flat at 56 Grosvenor St, London on 29 November 1932 Dr Jennings White proposed that the name of the organisation be changed from the Association for the Scientific Treatment of Criminals (ASTC) to the Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency (ISTD), which went..Read More

The Portman Clinic was founded by Edward Glover in 1933 as the ‘Psychopathic Clinic’, with a consulting room n the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases at 73 Welbeck Street. On 18 September they saw their first patient: ‘a woman, 47 years of age, noted as having a violent temper,..Read More

Samuel Beckett was Wilfred Bion’s first case at the Tavistock Clinic. The analysis, which began in 1934, was difficult, lasted for nearly two years and had a profound reciprocal influence on both men. Beckett had come to London for analysis, because it was illegal in Ireland at the time. He..Read More

In the mid-1930s the Tavistock Clinic started to gain limited University recognition for its non-medical courses. This was led by social work in particular and  the courses with the London School of Economics.

In 1936 the Rockefeller Foundation and the Sir Halley Stewart Trust awarded research grants to the Tavistock Clinic. ATM Wilson became the Rockefeller Fellow and Eric Wittkower the Sir Halley Stewart Fellow. ATM Wilson studied the psychological and social aspects of peptic ulcers . Eric Wittkower collaborated with  St Bart’s..Read More

On 1 September 1939 Hitler’s tanks rolled into Poland and World War 2 began. JR Rees was appointed as consultant psychiatrist to the Army at Home, responsible for the mental health of approximately three million people. Many key figures from the Tavistock Clinic joined him in the army, becoming what..Read More

In 1940 the Germans began an intense bombing campaign against industrial targets in Britain. On 7 September they changed their strategy and the Blitz came to London. The Tavi’s move to Hampstead justified itself as 51 Tavistock Square was reduced to pavement level. Then in the spring of 1941 the..Read More

On November 1940, ISTD and Portman Clinic moved to 17 Manchester Street after its original premises were destroyed in the Blitz.

In 1944 Michael Balint joined the Tavistock Clinic. Balint was a Hungarian refugee who had fled the Nazis in 1935, moving to Manchester, where he was director of the Child Guidance Clinic. He was a key figure in setting up the Family Discussion Bureau (now Tavistock Relationships). He developed ‘focal..Read More

In May 1946 the ISTD and Psychopathic Clinic moved to 8 Bourdon Street.

Jock Sutherland (1905 to 1991) joined the Tavistock Clinic in 1946 and became Medical Director in 1947, overseeing our transition into the NHS in 1948 and one of the most dynamic phases of the clinic’s history.

On 28 October 1947 Tavistock Publications was launched with JD Sutherland, ATM Wilson and John Harvard Watts as the original Directors. It was staffed by TS Fairly, Frank Frost (general editor), and John Harvard Watts (promotion). Tavistock Publications took over the publication of the TIHR’s quarterly journal, Human Relations, and..Read More

In 1946 Denis Carroll was appointed as Medical Director of the Portman Clinic alongside Dr Rubinstein

In July 1948 the Tavistock Clinic entered the NHS, coming under the Central Middlesex Group Hospital Management Committee of the North-west Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. Joining the NHS exposed the Tavistock Clinic to a much larger and wider patient group. However, sacrifices had to be made as it was primarily..Read More

In July 1950 the ISTD issued the first edition of The British Journal of Delinquency. Dr Edward Glover, Dr Hermann Mannheim and Dr Emanuel Miller were the editors.

In 1954 in Britain institutionalisation was still the main method for dealing with mental illness. There were 154,000 patients in asylums, which were overcrowded and underfunded. These contained 40 per cent of the NHS inpatient beds, but received only 20 per cent of the hospital budget. The second half of..Read More

In 1956 the Family Discussion Bureau transferred from the Family Welfare Association to the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.

In 1959, a pilot Adolescent Unit was created, led by Derek Miller and Dugmore Hunter, and in 1960, this became the Adolescent Department which was situated on one floor of a leased building at Hallam Street and was run with the part-time loan of staff from other departments. Originally the..Read More

The Portman Clinic organised a two day conference on the pathology and treatment of sexual deviation as part of World Mental Health Year 1961. The papers were collected and published as ‘The Pathology and Treatment of Sexual Deviation’ in 1964, and then republished in 1979 with additional material from Glasser..Read More

The Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) is one of the oldest and largest trans treatment centres in the world. It was founded in 1966 by Dr John Bulmer Randell (1918 to 1982) at Charing Cross Hospital, which at that time was still in the West End. It joined the Tavistock and..Read More

John Bowlby retired as head of Children and Parents in 1968, after 22 years of service and was succeeded by Marion McKenzie.

In 1969, the year of the first moon landing, further administrative changes took place within the NHS and the Tavistock Clinic came under the St Charles Hospital Management Committee. Under Robert Gosling’s leadership the Tavistock Clinic flourished once again and went through another period of significant expansion. Throughout his career..Read More

During the 1970s the Department for Children and Parents flourished. Martha Harris also wanted to see the influence of the Tavistock extended. In the mid-70s, believing that child development information should be more widely available for professionals working with children, she initiated the publication of the hugely successful ‘Understanding Your..Read More

In 1971, an important technical innovation – video – came to the Tavistock Clinic. Initially it was frowned on for clinical work, but James and Joyce Robertson again played a key role in getting it established as an invaluable analytic tool.

In 1976, Emanuel Lewis published ‘The Management of Stillbirth: Coping with an Unreality’. Working from 1968 to the 1990s Lewis and Stanford (Sandy) Bourne highlighted the trauma of stillbirth and its wider impact on families. The disposal of stillborn foetuses, without contact with the parents, remained routine practice until the..Read More

In 1979, Robert Gosling retired from the leadership of the Tavistock Clinic, due to his increasing deafness. Alexis Brook took over as Chair of the Professional Committee. Alexis Brook had served under JR Rees in the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1944 to 1947. He trained in psychiatry at the..Read More

At the start of the 1980s, the newly elected Conservative government had come to power with a mandate to reduce public spending. This cut across all areas of public services and the NHS was not exempt. It was against this background that following the Griffiths Report in 1983 the NHS..Read More

Gloucester House, or the Day Unit, as it was known at that time under joined the Tavistock Clinic in 1985. It entered as part when the Child Guidance Training Clinic merged with the Tavistock’s Children’s Department to form the Child and Family Department. More on Gloucester House

The Seymour Report had stated that although many of the courses at the Tavistock Clinic had professional recognition, training at the Tavistock Clinic also needed academic accreditation. A suitable academic partner had to be found and approaches were made to the University of East London (UEL). The timing was good..Read More

In 1988, Estela Welldon published ‘Mother, Madonna, Whore’ the first book on perversions in women. This seminal work challenged the accepted wisdom that women did not suffer from perversions. Her original ideas sent shockwaves through the psychoanalytic community and the feminist theorist circles of the time.

In 1992 Valerie Sinason published Mental Handicap and the Human Condition, new approaches from the Tavistock Clinic. This work was very much rooted in the Trust’s strong history of working with developmental issues in child education services and by the 1990s the Trust were a leader in the field. By the..Read More

In 1988, Margaret Thatcher announced a significant review of the NHS as a whole and from this two white papers were published that outlined the introduction of an ‘internal market’ that introduced competition into the NHS and proposed a split between purchasers and providers of care that continues to this..Read More

In 1999, Anton Obholzer’s continuing emphasis on promoting the good work of the clinic to the media bore fruit with the BBC’s six-part series, The Talking Cure, coinciding with the publication of a book of the same name. Although many at the Trust were concerned about the impact of media attention,..Read More

In the early years of the new century, equalities became a bigger issue at the Trust. Although equalities legislation had been put into place with the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968 and 1975, following the death of Stephen Lawrence, the 1999 Macpherson Enquiry found strong evidence of continuing institutional..Read More

In response to a call for research, in 2001 Phil Richardson and his team began work on the important and influential Tavistock Adult Depression Study. This long-term study was taken over by David Taylor in 2007 after Phil Richardson’s death. Felicitas Rost is currently the lead researcher. In 2015 it..Read More

In 2002, Anton Obholzer retired after playing a crucial role while at the helm of the Trust. He was succeeded by Nick Temple. Nick Temple had been a consultant at the Tavistock Clinic since 1989, with Margot Waddell. he had been a founder and joint editor of the Tavistock Clinic..Read More

In 2003, systemic therapy was recognised as one of the Trust’s six core disciplines, with systemic therapy having been in existence and running courses at the Trust since the 1970s and having established the first ever doctorate in systemic family therapy, in partnership with UEL in the 1980s.

In 2005, the Tavistock and Portman became the main provider of child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) for Camden, although we had been providing many aspects of CAMHS services and work in schools in Camden for several decades. Our MALT (Multi Agency Liaison Team), led by Rita Harris and..Read More

Matthew Patrick was the Chief Executive of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust from 2007 to 2013. He originally joined the Tavistock Clinic in 1990 as a senior registrar and spent a significant portion of his career as a consultant psychiatrist in the Adult Department, spending 24 years in..Read More

A new service, the Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) , was established by the Tavistock and Portman in 2008 to help parents stop using drugs or alcohol and keep families together. Instead of the usual care proceedings, a family chosen for the FDAC programme goes through a very different..Read More

In 2009 the Tavistock and Portman founded the City and Hackney primary care psychotherapy consultation service (PCPCS) to help GPs manage patients with complex needs. The PCPCS was initially located in the ground floor annexe of Shoreditch Health Centre and its founders included: Phil Stokoe, Louise Lyon, Rob Senior and..Read More

In 2013 the PCPCS won a Royal College of Psychiatrists Award and in 2015 it won a British Medical Journal Award. The PCPCS: long-read

In December 2013, Paul Jenkins became the new Chief Executive of the Tavistock and Portman, succeeding Matthew Patrick. Paul Jenkins had a significant public sector career. He was awarded an OBE in 2002 for his role in setting up NHS Direct. Paul had then worked in the third sector as..Read More

In 2014 the Tavistock and Portman launched a wide-ranging project to tackle inequalities relating to LGBTQI+ status and root out the pathologisation of homosexuality in our recommended texts and teachings. The project was led by Louise Lyon, Trust Director and Chair of the Equal Opportunities Committee, in collaboration with Stonewall,..Read More