Category Archives: 1950s

‘The man Who disturbed the world’s sleep’. Sidney J Baker’s review of Ernest Jones’s biography of Sigmund Freud, 1954

15 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by in 1950s, Biography of Sigmund Freud, Sidney J. Baker

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Sidney J Baker’s name began appearing in the book review section of the Sydney Morning Herald from  February 1952, building on his reputation as a  journalist and linguist, he is renowned for his collections of Australian slang. Baker formed the hypothesis that language evolved from peoples’ experiences of their new environment.    In 1941 Baker had received a Commonwealth Literary Grant of 250 pounds to complete his work on Australian slang. Baker’s interest in language also marks appeciation of the transition people had to make from one culture and country to another. He recognized that migration did not mean exact transplantation, but that in the hiving away new developments occurred. From their arrival in 1700 Settler Colonials, the British migrants in a land far away from Home in England, found new words to describe their activites and sentiments, drawing from their own backgrounds and their interchange with indigenous people. Their’s was a singular langauge, indicating the emergence of a separate ‘Aussie’ identity. They were in a land far from their British roots. Baker’s question, at its root, is about how people responded, consciously and unconsciously. Language was an indicator.

His work struck a chord with readers. His books were widely read, he was in demand as a lecturer and commentator. He gained more work in his profession. A look through the Autralian National Lirary’s digitised newspaper collection, TROVR shows that in 1952 he had landed a job as a resident journalist with the Herald. We wsee that every week from February 1952 a feature article apeared, whether it was a book review, commentary on an idea aor further work on language or exploration. His interest in the mind is apparent in his carefully written   article on the history of hypnotism prompted by a Bill then before the British House of Commons.  There is a biographical study to be written about  Baker, who seems to have had left wing views as his article unionisation of art reflects.

Baker was also an editor, the International Journal of Sexology,  published  in Bombay from 1948, a reflection of his long standing interest in psychoanalysis.  It is unclear how he made its acquaintance. It is possible that Lotte Fink, a colleague on the editorial staff of the International Journal of Sexology, responded to his curiosity. Fink’s husband, Siegfried Fink, a Sydney based  neurologist and psychoanalyst, was an Associate of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society, prior to the family’s escape to Australia. He retrained as a medical practitioner in order to continue psychoanalytic practice in Australia and was a founder member of the Australian Society of Psychoanalysts founded in 1952.

It is not surprising then that the first volume of  Ernest Jones’s biography of Sigmund Freud was *the* Book of the Week in the  the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 1 May 1954. ‘Freud was a man who “troubled the sleep of the world” by probing into the deep levels of human motivation. He was the first man to formulate methods of effecting radical changes in human personality. He explored and charted the unconscious. Herevealed the nature of infantilesexuality.’ Baker goes on: ‘for all the immense importance of these matters, however, Dr. Jones sees his greatest scientific deeds as his development of the “free association method” of analytical treatment and his self-analysis, which began in 1897’. 1897 is regarded by Jones as the ‘acme’ of Freud’s life.

Baker recalls meeting Ernest Jones ‘ a puckish old man and international authority on ice skating’ at a meeting of the British Psychoanalytical Society during his visit to London in 1951. There is is no better authority on Freud, Baker continued. He was the ‘oldest colleague of Freud’s still alive’. Baker details Jones’s account of Freud’s early life from 1856 to 1900, when ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ was published. Baker picks up on Jones’s account of Freud’s travel phobias, anxiety and depression, to wonder for himself about the effect of early experiences in Freud’s life upon his later. And whether it was possible that events in Australia could have had  an influence in Freud’s life. It is an interesting point. Transnational linkages in knowledge, news, trade, and culture have  been occurring for a long time.   Or is it an acknowledgement of the greatness of Freud’s thought he finds reflected in Jones’s work?

Here is Baker’s final paragraph.

Australian readers may find special interest in this study because it seems highly probable that this country had an influence in shaping Freud’s character. It came about this way: His father, Jakob Freud, was a woolmerchant in the Moravian town
of Freiberg when Sigmund was born] in 1856. As increasing sup plies of Australian wool fed the English market, imports from the Continent declined. Freiberg was among the centres affected. Things went so badly for Jakob Freud that, in 1859, when Sigmund was aged three, the family moved first to Leipzig and then to Vienna. Since Freud has taught that “the essential foundations of character are laid down by the age of three and that later events can modify but not alter thetraits then established”,  one may suspect that this event, involving a break with the home of a happy childhood, left a perma-nent mark on Freud’s personality.
The entire review, complete with illustrations,   can be read here.

 

Baker followed up with his own research. His early psychobiography  My Own Destroyer , a psychoanalytic study of the explorer Matthew Flinders was published by Angus and Robertson in 1962.

 

 

References:

BOOKS OF THE WEEK (1954, May 1). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 10. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27518122

FINK Siegfried born 7 March 1893; nationality German; FINK Lotte Augusta, age 41; FINK Ruth Annette, age 7, NAA: A997, 1938/174

“HERALD” SATURDAY MAGAZINE (1952, March 15). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 9. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18250066

Cut-Rate Art For Everyone (1952, April 12). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 6. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18261550

 

An Elegy for Elizabeth Kardos – ‘A contribution to the theory of play’.

30 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in 1950s, Andrew Peto, Sydney Institute of Psychoanalysis

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In January 1955, the Hungarian born and trained psychoanalyst – and refugee -Andrew Peto, read a paper to the Annual Conference of the Australian Society of Psychoanalysts, in Adelaide, South Australia. Written by his late wife, the child analyst, Elizabeth Kardos, ‘A Contribution to the Theory of Play’ was the summation of her ideas developed over the previous decade’s work as a child analyst in Budapest. As Peto explained in his introduction, Elizabeth died shortly after the Nazis arrived in Budapest in 1944. She left  behind her daughter, Agnes, born in 1943. In 1945, Agnes, together with a woman, named only as ‘Mrs Andrew Peto’ was the subject of an application for admission to Australia. Andrew Peto, described as a psychoanalyst and physician, was the subject of a separate application. The Peto family, Andrew, his second wife, Hannah, and Hannah’s  daughter from a prior marriage,  finally made landfall in Australia, at Perth, on 28 April 1950. They travelled on in Melbourne where they stayed with Clara Geroe and her family. By 1951 the family had moved to Sydney.

Prior to the war, in early 1939, Andrew Peto and Elizabeth Kardos were part of a group of European analayts that applied for visas to New Zealand. But that government refused them – perhaps reflecting the advice of  Dr Stuart Moore who stated that psychoanalysis would not find much support in that country.

The group had to turn elsewhere.   Encouraged by Ernest Jones, and perhaps by the information that the Australian Government would accept 30,000 refugees, the Geroe family applied, successfully, for a Visa to Australia. Kardos and Peto also applied, following the Geroes, to  Australia House in London.  But while the Geroe application, made in her husband’s name was being considered, Kardos and Peto were advised that a previous application, made directly to Australia, would be considered only in Australia.  On 13 January 1940 the Geroe family was advised their application was successful- not because Clara Geroe was a psychoanalyst nor, especially, because she had a child. Vilmos Geroe, a qualified accountant with experience in a factory making fire-proof bricks provided the grounds for  acceptance.

It is unlikely that Peto and Kardos were ever  serious contenders for visas. None of the psychoanalysts who applied for Australian visas were successful. At the time, the Australian Branch of the British Medical Association was strongly campaigning against the admission of European qualified doctors. In the meantime, Mr Carrodus, head of the Department of Interior, and charged with the administration of refugee matters, cut the proposed intake to 15,000. The government preferred British migrants.

Peto did not stay long in Australia. He and his family departed for New York in October 1956, six and a half years after their arrival.  During his time in Australia Peto had worked with Geroe, Frank Graham and Roy Coupland Winn to establish the Australian Society of Psychoanalysts in 1953, drawing together the interests of the newly formed  Sydney Institute of Psychoanalysis (1951) and the Melbourne Institute. He conducted seminars, wrote papers, provided supervision and took on a trainee, Maida Hall. Janet Neild, a child analyst who had begun her training with Clara Geroe, moved from Melbourne to Sydney for further education and supervision with him.

The reason commonly given for Peto’s departure centres around the BMA’s reluctance to recognize Peto as a medical practitioner. But upon  considering the opening lines of his paper, it is to wonder about the trauma Peto carried with him along with the rejection of this new country in which he had tried to settle.  It may be that he saw Australia as a stop along the way to the United States.  But the question remains. What if… the Australian Department of Interior had been less locked into its preference for British migrants? And What if… the BMA had been more open? There are clearly more stories to tell.

Here is a link to the introduction to Kardos’ paper – Peto’s elegy to the brilliant woman who was his wife. An original copy is in Geroe’s archive.

Wrongful Committal: The Psychoanalyst, his wife, the Judge and the Asylum – Melbourne 1954

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in 1950s

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A serious, sad scandal…

In the course of a lifetime things happen that some would rather not remember. If they reach the public domain where one is the object of scandal and controversy and each prurient detail of life at the moment is published in the mainstream press, there is comfort in the idea that, in time, people will forget. Life will move on and memory will disappear into the archives.

Until recently.

Since 2010 the National Library of Australia has been digitizing its entire newspaper collection. A search engine has been developed and as a result the past is at our fingertips. Time is collapsed. So too is distance as we learn that newsmakers in one state were also celebrated in others. It is possible to see what made news sixty years ago. And despite uneasy questions about privacy, intrusion and boundaries, particularly when the subject matter concerns a well-known identity in the professional or social world, such events are all in the public domain. For historians, such as me, searching in this case for information about the psychoanalyst Clara Geroe, the possibility of stumbling upon something else of interest is increased. The question? Why is it important? Or is it all merely salacious gossip? Does writing about such matters some sixty years after the event increase understanding of the development of psychoanalysis in Australia? Certainly it is a glimpse into the culture of the day and, I suggest, into changing ideas about women, their place in the community and in marriage. And probably it also points to changing ideas and anxieties about mental illness, psychoanalysis and psychology and the power of psychiatry. For if a doctor could certify his wife, what did this mean for the rest of us?

The publicity surrounding the marital breakup of Frank and Nell Graham was the stuff of Hollywood legend where the marriages of movie stars featured on the front covers of magazines and, often enough, their divorces too. It had all the glamour of Melbourne’s elite. A handsome profile of Frank himself was published in the newspapers. It was reported in the interstate press and made it into some of the regional papers. The year was 1954. Frank Graham was a respected psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Nell, as was the custom of the day, had listed herself on the electoral roll as undertaking ‘Home Duties’. The couple had one son aged about seven. If the papers are to be believed, Nell’s version was that the marriage breakup was due to Frank’s obsession with psychoanalysis – a subject on which, she told reporters, they vehemently disagreed. Frank’s response was that he wanted to help his wife whom he genuinely considered to be mentally ill. Nell Graham did not agree with that either. Neither did her family nor it seems did Joan Rosenove, the first woman Barrister in Victoria who represented Nell Pro Bono in the ensuing court case along with Mr D M Campbell QC. It may be that Dr Richard Ramsay Webb, the Superintendent of Royal Park Hospital, where Nell Graham was admitted, and Justice Martin, the judge who heard the case, also did not agree with Dr Graham’s assessment.

At the time Frank and Nell Graham had been married for thirteen years and had had a son together.They had moved to Victoria from Sydney shortly after their marriage in 1940. Frank, a newly graduated doctor had sought psychoanalysis from Roy Coupland Winn from whom he had heard about the arrival of the Hungarian psychoanalyst Dr Clara Lazar Geroe and, in 1941, her appointment as a training analyst for the British Psychoanalytical Society. He found a job at Melbourne’s Royal Park Hospital, and asylum for the mentally ill.  The job also provided accommodation for medical staff in the  hospital grounds. In this way Frank commenced analytic training: – sessions of analysis, supervisions and seminars with Geroe. Nell was a trained nurse. But, as was the path of women of the day, she stayed at home to look after the house and, eventually, to care for their son. It is also relevant for readers to be aware that Frank Graham, who had suffered from Polio as a child, walked with the support of a stick.

By 1946 Graham had commenced practice at 110 Collins Street in Melbourne – the same address as Geroe. In 1951 Graham was an Associate Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He had published papers on group analysis in the Australian Medical Journal, was active as secretary of the Melbourne Institute for Psychoanalysis and the newly formed Psychoanalytical Society of Australia.

What follows next can be deduced from the newspapers which, for the benefit of readers, reported every skerrick about a marriage in trouble. Nell had been unwell for some time during 1950. Frank believed this was psychosomatic and wanted her to consult “Madame Geroe”. She declined. On one occasion, after she asked her husband to find a masseur he had, she said, engaged Madame Geroe who visited their home, given her a massage with the result that Nell had begun to feel better. There were arguments over Frank’s obsession with psychoanalysis, a practice Nell disliked and with which she disagreed and thought to be ‘a fad and a fetish’. Nell did not like the fact that her husband consulted with women, and in an affidavit said she “believed her husband had had improper relations with his women patients as she I had seen him at his professional rooms with lipstick all over his face”. Frank Graham had become angry with his wife’s opposition; he had threatened her with his walking stick, roared at her that he wanted to cut her throat from ear to ear and called her a witch. It appears that the couple had separated by the beginning of 1954. Nell said she believed he had ‘found a new girlfriend’, a psychologist who was also undergoing psychoanalysis. Frank, Nell said, had told her of his hope they would have the ‘perfect child’.

Matters came to a head on 27 April 1954 when, it was reported in the press, a taxi pulled up outside Nell’s home, close to the back-yard.  A woman emerged from the vehicle and went to the back door. Nell tried to flee through the front door of the house but was grabbed by the woman, forced into a taxi and taken to Royal Park Hospital. She was certified by two of her husband’s colleagues. Nell said she believed this had been instigated by her husband.

 After eight hours in the admissions unit, the superintendent moved Nell to an open ward. She was not longer a certified patient. She was able to contact her brother and also her lawyers.

A writ of Habeus Corpus was issued, requiring Nell to be brought before the court especially to secure her release unless lawful grounds were shown for her detention. In her affidavit Nell declared she was perfectly sane and had been wrongfully committed by colleagues of her husband without a proper examination. She alleged they had been sent by her husband with whom she was in dispute about the custody of their child. Evidence was given by Dr Janet Pierson Cooper. She had examined Nell in June and December 1953 and during Nell’s admission to Royal Park. She could find no evidence that she was mentally ill. The question for the judge to decide was whether Nell Graham should remain in hospital.

After an initial hearing in his Chambers, Justice Smith referred the matter to Justice Martin whose careful consideration of the events set aside the emotional war raging between the couple. His question was whether the requirements under the Mental Hygiene Act had been followed.

He deduced the following: Nell been admitted to Royal Park, and as was the procedure for certified patients, placed in the reception unit gazetted for such purposes.  She remained there for eight hours. She was then removed, on the instructions of the Superintendent of Royal Park, Dr Ramsay Webb, to another part of the hospital which, ‘it so happened, was not gazetted under the act’. Was she still under certificate? Did she have to remain in hospital?  Rosenove  and Campbell argued that she was not. The Superintendent left it to the court to decide.

Counsel for Dr Graham argued that there had been little or no opportunity for his client to reply. Allegations had been made which were not true, he said.  There was also the question about whether Nell should be required to remain in hospital for a month pending further examination. Justice Martin declined. The matter before the court was whether Nell Graham was ‘improperly detained or not’. After more argument from Dr Graham’s Counsel, that she should be retained in hospital because it was believed she was mentally disturbed, Justice Martin found that as Nell had not been kept in the receiving house at Royal Park the entire basis of her being kept in hospital ‘had fallen to the ground’. By moving her from the receiving house the Superintendent had nullified her certification under the Act. Nell was released.

Nell Graham was far from mad, I think.  She was certainly distressed. And so was her husband whose belief and commitment to psychoanalysis his wife bitterly resented. They were a couple at war whose battles, momentarily, had reached the front pages. The fact that Frank Graham was a doctor who had tried to certify his wife was part of the interest.

After the court case was over the press, Hollywood style, waited for a statement from Frank Graham. It was finally released on 5th April, 1954. He tried to make light of the events. After all he loved his wife and Nell had always been ‘only girl for me’, he said. But he remained true to his belief in his diagnosis which was recorded in affidavits that would not be released to the press. There was the matter of their son’s custody to consider and, quite sensibly, he declared the matter closed.

By the end of 1954 Nell Graham took her husband to court again. Her complaint was that he had not provided sufficient means of support. It is was decided between the pair, with the assistance of legal representatives, that Nell would be paid 13 pounds a week. Graham was ordered to pay costs.

So why is this very sad and tragic tale of a marital breakup important?

First there is the sensationalism of the reportage. From 1940 Frank Graham had pursued a new professional identity as the first Australian trained psychoanalyst under the new arrangement with the British Psychoanalytical Society. Together with Clara Lazar Geroe and several other colleagues he was involved in the dissemination of new ideas about the mind – involved in holding psychoanalytic conferences and lectures and seeing patients. This might have created uneasiness in the broader community. Perhaps Nell Graham reflected this unease. For most people, maybe, psychoanalysis was for Hollywood movie stars; about Freud, the Oedipus complex and dream interpretation – if it was thought about at all.

Secondly there was the sober and serious question about the rights of patients and the power of doctors to decide whether a person was insane or not. Justice Martin’s concern was whether Nell was being wrongfully treated when she arrived at Royal Park. The Superintendent, Dr Ramsay Webb, appeared to have concluded that there was no reason for Nell to remain in the gazetted unit after eight hours. Was he also signalling that he did not agree with his colleague’s certification of her?  It seemed that Dr Graham had certified his wife because he thought she was ill. Was she not protesting about her treatment from him in the only way she could? She thought him to be violent at this stage. She had been spurned and faced losing custody of her child. There was little support for single parents let alone women stigmatized by divorce in those days. But in the intensity of a marital dispute, if not breakup, emotions run high and words uttered that should not be. The matter needs more investigation.

Then there is the question of the woman’s place in marriage. One interpretation is that Nell was failing to support her husband in his chosen work. By not remaining silent she was bringing him and his profession into disrepute. But she was also challenging his assumed power over her. By speaking up against the accusation she was insane, gaining the support of two respected legal professionasl and also perhaps, through the act of removing her from the locked ward at Royal Park the judgement thrust upon her by her husband, the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, was in dispute.

Nell Graham had refused to co operate.

Finally there is the story of psychoanalytic training in Australia. It was still new, a little more than thirteen years since its commencement in Melbourne. A new branch had begun in Sydney in 1951 and they were working together to form an Australian group. When the Graham’s marital brawl reached the front pages the consulting room door was opened and humanity appeared at its most raw. It was packed away quickly when Graham made the statement that there would be no statment. But in the longer term?

References:

Release from mental home sought ‘I was grabbed, forced in taxi’ (1954, March 31). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 3. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26600200

WIFE’S CHARGES AGAINST DOCTOR HUSBAND (1954, March 31). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 – 1954), , p. 3. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205701697

Now in mental home Doctor’s wife asks court: ‘Set me free’ (1954, March 31). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 1. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26600132

Charge Against Doctor (1954, March 31). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 – 1954), , p. 1. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205701569

BASIS Or HOMES HOLD FALLS TO GROUND—JUDGE Royal Park told to let doctor s wife go (1954, April 3). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 5. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26601016

COURT ORDERS RELEASE OF MRS. GRAHAM (1954, April 3). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 – 1954), , p. 4. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205712093

Dr. Graham releases his statement (1954, April 5). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 5. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26601204

Judge Ends Order on Mrs. Graham (1954, April 6). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 – 1954), , p. 3. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205701464

He wants his son (1954, May 29). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 3. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article23422437

Doctor Seeks Son’s Custody (1954, May 29). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 – 1954), , p. 3. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205390299

Doctor to Pay Wife’s Maintenance (1954, December 10). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 – 1954), , p. 10. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205732277

About Looking After Children in Hospital – 1953

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in 1950s, Bowlby and Attachment Theory, Children in Hospital, Conferences and Lectures, Newspaper reportage, Public debate

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In my previous post I noted that Hungarian born and trained psychoanalyst Dr Andrew Peto was a speaker at Sydney’s twelve day Pacific Seminar on Mental Health in Childhood  in August 1953. Sponsored by the World Health Organisation with sixty delegates – medical practitioners, teachers, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers -.from sixteen  west Pacific and South East Asian countries it was a talkfest on child psychology not seen before. The director of the seminar was Dr. F. W. Clements lecturer in child health at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at the Universality of Sydney and  formerly chief of the Nutrition Section of W.H.O.  The purpose of the seminar was to  consider those forces in the child’s home and communal life that could help or hinder him in his growth towards a mature personality’. Curiously this international Congress was scarcely reported even though delegates were considering the leading research of the day. Melbourne’s Argus newspaper provided a brief overview of the conference under the heading: Experts have some cute ideas of how They’d Bring Up Mother” concluding that at the very least, professionals were better informed.The Sydney Morning Herald relegated the matter to the Women’s Pages with a major article on women doctors from South East Asia. In a thinly veiled attack upon these highly qualified professional women, the Herald wondered why they were not at home tending their children and carrying out household tasks.  Only one of the major Australian women’s magazine, the Australian Women’s Weekly contributed a well thought out item about a topic  covered during the conference about the needs of  children in hospital. As you will see the author, Veronica West, drew upon newly published Attachment research by John Bowlby and James Robertson.   West carefully negotiated some contentious issues between doctors and reformers.Thanks to the National Library of Australia’s website TROVE, we are able to read these articles easily. West wrote:

Are Australian hospitals mending the bodies of sick children while blindly subjecting their minds to emotional stress more damaging in many cases than the disease or condition from which they are suffering? Must the price of the child’s health be submission to an inflexible hospital routine which catapults him from the security of home to a world in which his two paramount fears are realised – desertion by his parents, injury at the hands of strangers? Is Australia to lag behind progressive English and American hospitals which encourage the presence of mothers at the bedside of their sick children? Many medical and hospital representatives who attended the Seminar on Mental Health in Childhood at Sydney University last August are asking themselves these questions.A few enlightened paediatricians (child specialists) and doctors have long been trying to introduce overseas reforms in Australia. The safeguarding of children from unnecessary, frightening experience and training the nursing staff in basic concepts of child psychology are other steps, being taken abroad.First to throw down an official challenge to the old hospital visiting system is the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne. It now proudly announces the success of a scheme which makes hospital routine fit in with new daily visiting hours for mothers.

This article was set in motion by the distress of a friend who spent two weeks in an intermediate ward of a city hospital. She said she couldn’t forget the despairing cries of “Mummy, Mummy, where are you?” which she heard from a nearby children’s ward throughout the night. She was astounded to hear that mothers were only allowed to visit the children once a week. When my friend spoke to the night sister about the distress of the children, her anxiety for them was dismissed as maternal sentiment.

“Nonsense!” said the sister, “a sedative soon puts them to sleep. The kiddies are always like this for a couple of days after visiting days. We dread visiting days. They do more harm than good.” My friend was told that except for a few problem cases the children were perfectly happy with the nurses during the week. “They are quiet and good, and settled in, but as soon as mother comes they stage terrific tantrums.” When she told me the story my friend said that if her own child went to hospital and was as mentally distressed as some of the children she had seen and heard, she would insist, through her doctor, on reasonable access to her little girl. Was my friend being over maternal and foolish, or was she instinctively right? Í set about finding out.

West attended the Seminar on Childhood Mental Health in Sydney in August 1953. She wrote,

The Seminar on Mental Health in Childhood revealed something of the general impact of hospital experience on the child of pre-school age. Subjects discussed included depriving the child of the comfort of his mother’s presence, his fear of pain, the isolation and aimlessness of his existence, the uncertainty of ever getting home again, and the inner turmoil and emotional drive to which frail bodies were subjected.With two-year-olds or three year-olds, especially, it was pointed out, the immediate reaction was a period of agitated despair, during which the child screamed, refused food, and only exhaustion brought sleep. After i a few days he became the quiet, good, allegedly settled-in child-in reality the apathetic, frozen-emotion child who had reached a serious stage of mental sickness...Sir Ronald Mackeith, of Guy’s Hospital, London, told of reforms which remove the risk of hospital damage to the child’s personality. One of the simplest was the opening of wards to mothers, who fed, bathed, and generally assisted the staff in the care of their own child on their visits. The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, I discovered, had been experimenting with daily visiting for the smaller children over the past two years, had found this a success, and had introduced regular daily visiting for all children four months ago. The Medical Director, Dr. Vernon Collins, said that he regards the ideal as “free visiting where the parents may come to the hospital at any time.” He believes that this is essential to build up good relation ship between the mother and the nursing staff and to get the best care for the child.

Quoting this as an example, I interviewed leading paediatricians, medical men, child psychologists, hospital medical superintendents, matrons and sisters. I found the paediatriciains and doctors awake to recent research and already trying to apply the new methods to their patients, but still uncertain ol how general reforms could be carried out. Their reactions were surprisingly mixed, with individual but not collective antagonism to the new methods. Some had not heard of  visiting – hour reforms, and wary of the threat to hospital routine, were reluctant to hear of, or discuss, the subject. Others equally ill-informed listened kindly, but remained unshaken in their conviction that present methods were best. As an official spokesman put it, they were “sitting pat and waiting.”

West seems unimpressed by that response. She continued:  Here is the statement of the official spokesman of that hospital-the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Sydney, which has 485 beds and treated 11,777 in-patients last year…

“Just say we are interested in the entire subject and an studying all the material available, but we prefer to wait and see. There will be no immediate alteration in the Sunday visiting day for the children.”

Here, too, are some of the opinions expressed at interviews: First, a talk with a hospital matron with many years’ experience in children’s wards. “I think the reforms will have to come,” she said. “The seminar undoubtedly opened the eyes of some of us who have long prided ourselves on the physical care of children in our charge. The most efficiently run ward in Sydney is not worth the constant reproach of the screams of the frenzied child, or the misery and listless apathy of the quiet child, star ing blankly, hour after hour at hospital walls.”

The most outspoken of the pediatricians who recently returned from England and who had instituted more liberal visiting hours in his hospital outside London said this: “Christmas is coming, and we will again have Press photographs of happy children and gaily decorated ward:and once again people will murmur warmly, ‘The hospitals are wonderful going to so much trouble for the children!’ “What the enlightened child expert would like is a little of this Christmas sentiment from hospitals and doctors spread over twelve months in our children’s wards.“When I was a medical resident I agreed with the general opinion that the weekly visiting day for mothers, with its aftermath of temperatures up and chaos in the wards, was an unnecessary evil. “Experience brought wisdom. In the London hospital I arranged for the mothers to visit the children daily, dropping in and out for brief visits on the way to town or after shopping.”The mothers sometimes fed the children, tidied beds washed them, and were of real assistance to the nursing staff. Reassured by the seemingly casual visits of the mothers the children were happy and contented, and were discharged mentally and physically well. “Certainly some cried when their mothers left, just as children here in our private ward« who enjoy the. privileges of more frequent visiting do. But a little weeping at temporary parting is one of our natural human emotions. It bears no relation to the violent reactions, or, worse, the disturbingly quiet ones, of the visit-starved public-ward child. Of course, we must have hospitals for sick children, and any physical pain inflicted is negligible to the suffering it spares the child, but too often both doctors and parents undertake to put a child into hospital without giving sufficient thought to the matter”.

The Doctor continued: “Some parents fall down on ‘he job of preparing the child for what lies ahead. They, in mistaken kindness, tell him fairy stories or refer to his approaching period in hospital as a ‘party.’ “What happens when the child arrives for the ‘party’?

“Generally he is whisked away from his harassed mother at the admission office, and, stripped of his favorite teddy bear or chewing rug, he is jet propelled into his new world. For the next six days until visiting day he is walled up in a world of white, forsaken bv his parents, helpless against the towering, white-clad, masked strangers who periodically select him for injury. It is not the pain-most children can take pain better than adults-it is the terror of what it is all about that breaks the child. While the comfort of the sympathetic nurse is often refused by the child in his des- pair, the reprimands and threats of the thoughtless, ill tempered nurse aggravate the situation. “Some of our hospitals allow the mother to accompany the child to his bed, get him used to the nurse, as well as letting him keep his cherished toys.

“In others where haste and ordered routine is the rule the opposite is the case. In many of these hospitals it is still the current practice on chaotic tonsillectomy morning to line up about a dozen young patients on a form out- side their ward or adjoining the theatre for upwards of an hour, and drag them off one by one.. for the operation.”

A woman pediatrician had this to say: “‘Certainly periods in hospital do not affect all children, temporarily or permanently. This is also true of epidemics, yet we would not deliberately expose children to such a risk, I believe a system of staggered daily visiting hours would be best, with full co- operation between the doctor in charge and the sister. Of course, some mothers because of domestic duties or because they live a long way from the hospital would not be able to make the daily visit.”

And what of the position in hospitals or wards where the children may stay months or even years? Two doctors stressed the need for closer contact between mothers and children in such hospitals.

“I commend any doctor or parent about to confine a child to one of these hospitals to study Bowlby’s report to the World Health Organisation***,” one of them said. “As he and the famous Sir James Spence point out, these hospitals, despite the various activities, occupations, and entertainments arranged for the children, overlook one important factor -the depriving of the child of his mother. Perhaps Australia cannot immediately emulate these reforms, but some of the broken mother-child relationship can be repaired by extending visiting hours.

Finally I saw child psychologist Miss Zoe Benjamin. Clinging to mother, temper tantrums, bed-wetting, hostility towards the mother, and kindergarten activities are all typical symptoms of hospital experience,” said Miss Benjamin. Handled sympathetically by parents, these usually disappear, but can lead to serious results. The experts quoted agreed that the most urgently needed reform was an increase in visiting hours in children’s hospitals, which must be championed by an enlightened medical profession generally.

I for one was surprised to find this article published as long ago as 1953. I remember attending lectures at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital during the 1980s when Isabel Menzies Lyth from the Tavistock Clinic spoke about the needs of children in hospital. Here she advocated what one 1953 Australian Matron also promoted: that the ward be divided into smaller units with children allocated to a ‘team’ of carers during their admission? It seemed, upon listening to Mezies lyth that her recommendations and their implementations were far more recent. It is to be wondered about why such a large newspaper as the Sydney Morning Herald failed to report upon this and other matters arising from this international conference. Was there some sort of external pressure upon its editorial team not to do so? It would be interesting to look into this a little more.

*** “Child Care and the Growth of Love”-Penguin edition summary of the John Bowlby report to the World Health Organisation

References:

Child Care Is Their Subject. (1953, August 20). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 5 Section: Women’s Section. Retrieved April 20, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18383141

Sick children need parents at their bedside. (1953, November 25). The Australian Women’s Weekly (1933 – 1982), p. 20. Retrieved April 20, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article41447234

 

 

 

 

 

Introducing The Europeans – 1938-58

06 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in 1950s, Emigres

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During the 1930s and 1940s the exodus of Jewish families from Europe in response to Nazi persecution saw other nations scrambling to work out some sort of intake process, for fear, it seems, of inundation. A significant group, some practising members of European psychoanalytic societies, found their way to the Americas, Britain and the Dominions with either support and sponsorship from Ernest Jones then President of both the International Psychoanalytic Association and the British Psychoanalytic Society.  Others travelled independently, relying upon family and personal networks to find sponsors to their particular countries of choice. Ernest Jones’s concentrated work, beginning at the time of the Anschluss in 1933 resulted in the Freud family’s emigration from Vienna to London in 1938 and the relocation of a number of analysts to all parts of the world. So far the influence of Hungarian trained Clara Lazar Geroe, appointed by Jones as Australia’s first training analyst who arrived in Melbourne in 1940. At least two or three other analytically trained medical practitioners travelled independently of Jones’s rescue program and arrived in Australia. Hungarian analyst Andrew Peto who had also been approved for entry at the same time as Geroe did not arrive until 1948. Two German born doctors, Karl Winter who had been trained and analysed by Hans Sachs arrived in Adelaide with his wife in the early 1930s. Dr Siegfried Fink arrived in Sydney on 22 February 1939 with his wife, Lotte and daughter, Ruth. In contrast with Geroe these doctors appear to have faded into the historical record.

The Finks were amongst the fortunate ones: perspicacious enough to see that leaving the country was their best option before the tragedy of Kristallnacht. The family was interviewed – and accepted for Australia by the British Consul on 22 October 1938.  Somehow the family had made contact with a potential sponsor:Dora Birtles  author of The Overlanders and later a film of the same name, and at that time a member of an anti-fascist organisation. Birtles and her husband, Bert, had travelled and lived throughout China, Russia and Europe from about 1932 before returning to Australia in 1938. Birtles, by then living back in Sydney, sponsored the family. Fink listed his intended profession to be “psychoanalyst’.  He stated his race to be ‘White’ – a comment, perhaps, against the persecution against that had driven the family from their home in Frankfurt in Germany. Less than four months before on 11 November 1938, the date of what has since been referred to as Kristallnacht, the Nazis on orders from the central authority attacked Jewish homes, trashed synagogues, rounded up families and sent many of the men to Concentration camps for a short period. Afterward the Nazi advised Jewish people  could leave the country freely. This meant finding a country who would take them: difficult as far as entry into Britain and the United States were concerned. The Dominions were also reluctant. New Zealand closed its borders. The Australian Government eventually agreed to an intake of some 15,000 (London 2003:39). Siegfried Fink eventually worked as a neurologist. He was a regular attendee of its meetings from the early 1940s and, after its founding in the early 1950s, the Sydney Institute of Psychoanalysis. Lotte was an active member of the Jewish Women’s Association in Sydney. From 1947 she was a member of the editorial committee and contributor to of the International Journal of Sexology writing on marital relationships and child development. Her book on child development, ‘The Child and Sex’ was published in 1944.

Hungarian, Andrew Peto, was also approved for entry with his then wife, Elizabeth Kardos, he remained in Hungary. It was not until after Kardos’s death in 1945 followed by the Communist uprising in Hungary, that he applied afresh. This time, in 1946 a family contact, a remote cousin, Dr Nicholas Whealy, then working as a physician in Sydney, agreed to sponsor Peto, his second wife and child. He landed first in Melbourne in 1948 before moving to Sydney in 1950 and with financial assistance from Dr Roy Coupland Winn, founded the Sydney Institute of Psychoanalysis.(Mezaros 2012: 31-32). Peto remained in Australia for less than a decade. In 1956 he resigned from the Sydney Institute of Psychoanalysis and immigrated to New York.  Generally the reasons given for Peto’s resignation concern his qualifications to practice ( Damousi 2005, passim).

One wonders whether the reasons given for this move are entirely accurate.Perhaps there was some rivalry from Melbourne and Dr Geroe. Peto appears to have been a senior analyst in Hungarian circles; he had published widely and with a special interest in early childhood development. I can find little, if anything published by Geroe who appears to have qualified two years before her departure from Hungary in 1938. Nevertheless there was, for European born doctors, a long process of application and study to be undertaken before the Australian Government allowed them to practice.  Although Karl Winter was a qualified doctor with a special interest in psychoanalysis, it was not until the mid to late 1950s that he was granted status as a psychiatrist. He was influential and respected by South Australian colleagues in the psychiatric field: Harry Southwood who was trained as an analyst by Clara Geroe recognises his influence and training by Hans Sachs. Nevertheless by the late 1950s when his name was suggested for possible membership, Geroe insisted that he completed the Australian training.

Andrew Peto appears to have been extremely productive. In 1957 the Bulletin of the International Psychoanalytic Association (No 122) recorded his work as a faculty member and group leader of the Seminar on Mental Health in Childhood organized by the World Health Organization and Commonwealth of Australia held in Sydney from 10-27 August 1953. In his annual report to Dr Hellman at the British Institute of Psychoanalysis Peto reported that he had given two lectures at this Seminar: the ‘Psychoanalytical Theory of Early Childhood Development’ and ‘The Effects of Separation on Childhood’ (1). These were published in the Report of the Seminar on Mental Health in Childhood by the WHO and the Commonwealth Department of Health ( 1953). In 1954 Peto also published an article in the British Journal of Medical Psychology:’The Interrelations of Delinquency and Neurosis’  ( Vol. XXVII, Parts 1&2, pp.1-14). This was in addition to activities such as holding theoretical and clinical seminars for members and students of the institute, holding seminars for Institute members, numbering 11, and holding an introductory seminar for paediatricians at the Institute of Child Health. Fink, of course, as a regular attendee and, no doubt discussant. It is quite striking, a sign of the times and newspaper editors’ estimation of the importance of child development matters in the wider community that there was little coverage of this event. A brief look at the Sydney papers of the day shows that the conference was given a small space in the Women’s Pages. Rather more was given, some 2000 words, or so, to an article calling for a rethinking of children’s’ needs in hospital, in the Australian Women’s Weekly. Citing John Bowlby’s Attachment theories amongst others, the writer criticised practices where the rigidity of hospital procedures saw children catapulted from ‘the security of home to a world in which his two paramount fears are realised – desertion by his parents, injury at the hands of strangers’. Allowing parents to be with their children in hospital, the writer argued, enabled better and quicker healing and psychological health.

Overall though one wonders whether there is a deeper if not more disturbing story as psychoanalytic practice struggled to establish itself during the 1950s. It may be that rivalries between the Sydney and Melbourne groups, may have had something to do with it.Or it may be that Clara Geroe, as an appointee of the IPA/British Institute felt she should be in charge. Archival material available so far suggests that the younger newly trained analysts from the Melbourne group were coming to the forefront, while the Europeans in Sydney remained in the background. Was it that the European influence was eschewed in favour of the British? Australia in the 1950s, rested under the leadership of Anglophile Prime Minister, Robert Menzies and would do so until his retirement in 1966 and beyond, until 1973 after the election of the first Labor Government for twenty-three years.

 

References

(1) Andrew Peto to Dr Hellman 21 May 1954, Archives of the British Institute of Psychoanalysis, (G07/BH/F01/16).

Joy Damousi( 2005), Freud in the Antipodes: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia, Sydney, UNSW Press, passim.

Louise London (2003), Whitehall and the Jews, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p.39.

Judit Mezaros,( 2012) ‘Effect of Dictatorial Regimes on the Psychoanalytic Movement in Hungary Before and After World War II’, in Mariano Ben Plotkin and Joy Damousi, (eds.), Psychoanalysis and Politics: Histories of Psychoanalysis Under conditions of Restricted Political Freedom, USA, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp.30-31.

Psychoanalysis, Children In Care and Government Policy, Melbourne,Victoria, 1957

26 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by in 1950s, Government policy

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In my wanderings around Melbourne’s libraries I  have stumbled upon a slim volume with a long title: Child Care Staffs in Institutions: Report on Survey Undertaken for the Children’s Welfare Advisory Council To Determine the Need for Courses of Training. It is softcovered and 111 pages in length, including eight appendices of proposed trainings for mothercraft nurses and the staff of occupation centres. A list of some fifty odd institutions covered in the report heads the field: a mixture of government and religious based institutions, many run by Roman Catholic orders. The report was commissioned by the newly formed Children’s Welfare Advisory Council on 18 September 1956. Established simultaneously with the implementation of the 1954 Children’s Welfare Act the Council was intended to form a link between government and voluntary child care institutions: a way of getting religious and secular institutions on to the same page, maybe. Up until then the two groups had operated separately. Some were happy enough with the new arrangement. Others clearly were not: perhaps the level of co operation from these organisations – particularly Catholic run organisations – were indicative of resistance to the new order. The report was completed in 1957.The powers be thought the public should read it too, so it was  released the following year.

This report is a remarkable historical document – signalling a response to post-war developments in Britain where psychoanalytic clinicians began to articulate the needs of neglected and abandoned children in the light of their experiences with evacuated children. Britain’s 1946 Curtis Report, Children Without Homes, ( ‘Report of the Care of Children Committee’)  written by former University of Western Australia lecturer and then member of Anna Freud’s group, Ruth Thomas.

There had been problems getting it incorporated into British policies, a matter taken up in the House of Lords by Lord Iddesleigh who explained:

Many children were suffering quite unnecessarily because the adults responsible for their upbringing in the various homes and institutions were untrained. There was a most serious lack of trained child workers, and the Curtis Committee therefore established a sub-committee to investigate the whole matter of training. This committee reported, and its report was adopted by the main Committee. There are three recommendations in the Interim Report which appear to have a particular urgency. In the first place, there is the recommendation for the appointment of a Central Training Council of qualified persons representing various bodies engaged in the field of child care. The function of that Central Training Council was to survey the whole field of training, and to establish such facilities as they considered needful. 

Lord Iddesleigh, was worried about a lack of response to the Committee’s findings and that the report and the children would be  forgotten.

Criticisms made by the Curtis Report are very painful, and the revelations are shocking. It it one of the most distressing features of the local authorities’ administration of Poor Law children that very often they are kept in workhouses not for six weeks which I believe is the legal period-but for months and months and months. I do not think that I should be doing my duty if I do not read to your Lordships one brief description of the conditions that prevail in these workhouses. One paragraph in the Report says: “The smell in this room was dreadful. A premature baby lay in an opposite ward alone. This ward was very large and cold. The healthy children were housed in the ground floor corrugated hutment which had been once the old union casual ward The dayroom was large and bare and empty of all toys. The children fed, played and used their pots in this room. They ate from cracked enamel plates, using the same mug for milk and soup. They slept in another corrugated hutment in old broken black iron cots some of which had their sides tied up with cord. The mattresses were fouled and stained. On inquiry there did not appear to be any available stocks of clothes to draw on and it was said by one of the assistant nurses that ‘everything was at the laundry and did not come back.’ The children wore ankle length calico or flannelette frocks and petticoats and had no knickers. Their clothes were not clean. Most of them had lost their shoes; those who possessed shoes had either taken them off to play with or were wearing them tied to their feet with dirty string. Their faces were clean; their bodies in some cases were unwashed and stained.”

This was one of the worst cases, Lord Iddesleigh acknowledged… but coupled with Britain’s history of providing barrack type accommodation for children, his description underlined the depth of the problem. Trained people, he reckoned -(he believed this to be work for women) – would do much to move the situation beyond  what it then was.

It is a very frightening thought, my Lords, the extent to which the happiness of deprived children is confined to not very competent little clerks and minor officials, who are often over-worked, who are not specialists in their subject, and whose horizon is bounded by very petty departmental considerations.(Lord Iddesleigh, 12 December 1946, Session 1946-47,House of Lords Hansard,George VI year 11,853,Fifth Series, Volume 144, cc.882-908).

A decade later, in Victoria, Australia,  David Merritt took up the main thrust of the report as he developed his research project. He argued that the  main danger of institutional life was ‘lack of interest in the child as an individual’, and the tendency to ‘remote and impersonal relations’. The children ‘continually feel the lack of affection’, he continued. It was ‘in striking and painful contrast to the behaviour of a normal child of the same age in his parents’ home’.

Merritt echoes earlier commentary on destitute and state children. In 1909, South Australian writer and activist, Catherine Helen Spence, had made similar observations during the first interstate congress of workers amongst State Children. Her work, in turn, drew upon the work of Florence Davenport Hill whose writings on children living in orphanages and workhouses eventually published in her 1889 book Children of the State  – influenced the direction of government policy in New South Wales and South Australia.  Challenging contemporary eugenicist views of poverty and illegitimacy, Spence argued that that the quality of environmental provision was far more influential for the development of children into contributing members of society than genetic inheritance. She asserted that children who were boarded out, rather than institutionalised, generally fared better than institutionalised children, in the long term, as a result of the bond formed with their foster parents.  At the same congress, a delegate from the New South Wales State Children Relief Board also warned of the detrimental effect of institutionalisation on the individual development of the child.

Recognition of the value of boarding out, and of sustaining the bond between parent and child as much as possible, found endorsement in John Bowlby’s Attachment theory. Perhaps its research base, for Bowlby had assembled his evidence, enabled observations such as Spence’s and anecdotes such as Davenport Hill’s, to be elevated into something more scientific. The effects of maternal deprivation were spelt out afresh. Quoting from Bowlby’s Child Care and the Growth of Love ( Penguin, 1953), Merritt recorded,

The direct studies are the most numerous. They make it plain that, when deprived of maternal care, the child’s development is almost always retarded – physically, intellectually, and socially – and that symptoms of physical and mental illness may appear. Such evidence is disquieting, but sceptics may question whether the check is permanent and whether the symptoms of illness may not be easily overcome. The retrospective and follow-up studies make it clear that such optimism is not always justified and that some children are gravely damaged for life. This is a sombre conclusion, which must now be regarded as established. (Bowlby, 1953, pp.19-20, quoted in Merritt, 1956, p.14).

There was an additional warning: that the effects of deprivation arising from separation in the early years conceivably led to the formation of psychopathy and delinquency. Bowlby’s work had had its origins in clinical work at the London Child Guidance clinic. He had exchanged ideas with D.W Winnicott. It was taking time, but the swing away from views of delinquency as a result of genetic inferiority, to acceptance of notions child development contingent on parental availability and consistency, continued to gain ground steadily during the first half of the twentieth century.

What was required of institutional staff, Merritt concluded, was possession of the ‘qualities and abilities necessary to encourage normal development of each of the children in their care’. Drawing from the Care of Children Committee  Merritt listed the essential features of out of home care: (Note: Forgive the use of the masculine pronoun –  convention in 1956)

(i) Affection and personal interest; understanding of defects; care for his future; respect for his personality and regard for his self esteem.

(ii) Stability; the feeling that he can expect to remain with those who will continue to care for him until he goes out into the world on his own feet.

(iii)Opportunity of making the best of his ability and aptitudes, whatever they may be, as such opportunity is made available to the child in the normal home.

(iv)A share in the common life of a small group of people in a homely environment.

It would be interesting to see the working documents and correspondence that were part of the formation of this report; to turn the pages of the files, to note what was typed copy, what was not; to see what was said in the margin notes and asides, to observe the stuff of a busy day in public service. Who were the clergy who refused to participate, who decided that Merritt’s questionnaires were irrelevant  to their work? And who were the child care staff that became frightened that his questions masked criticism. Can we have  a sense of their ages? their years of experience? and indeed, of those who were kind and who were not? These questions belong to deeper documentary research than I can do here. We can only explore, with Merritt, some of the conditions he found in the institutions he visited and form our own questions.

David Merritt visited seventy-one institutions, each on two occasions. He interviewed staff and provided them with questionaires. He observed  the daily life of children living within the institutions: voluntary and statutory childrens homes, migration homes, babies homes, voluntary and juvenile schools, babies homes and homes for special categories of children: intellectually disabled, deaf and children suffering from spasticity. Accommodation ranged from a training farm accommodating six boys, but with but three resident at the time, up to a statutory institution with a capacity for 250 but actually accommodating 260. The most common type of accommodation was the dormitory style -with mass dining rooms. The largest dormitory was one for 50 boys. Merritt provided statistics and graphs. Of 3,204 state children in 1956 the majority -1500 – were boarded out in Children’s Homes. Only 449 were boarded out in foster homes with 129 placed without payment in foster homes. About 107 children were living in ‘Juvenile schools – having come before the courts -104 were placed in special schools in conjunction with the ‘Mental Hygiene’ department, 304 were living with relatives and the rest variously in live-in employment, hospitals, or were livingin institutions while they were treated for psychological problems.Material provision was high – fresh rooms, plenty of toys but inconsistent care.It appeared that a high proportion of children were ‘educationally retarded’, Merritt said. It was not clear whether this was a consequence of parental neglect or institutionalisation or a result of the frustrations encountered at school.

Merritt seems to have seen himself to be  faced with the problem of reconciling a system which lacked a framework for understanding the emotional, attachment needs of children and adults, with emerging ideas about the  needs of children in out of home care. At times Merritt was critical of the staff – his progressive views conflicting with the old school practicality.’Some staff members saw no problem at all – children were either “dull” or “bright” and that was that. Others were inclined to attribute poor school results to such things as ‘difficulty concentrating, sheer laziness or bad heredity’. He commented” ‘It would be true to say that a number of persons I interviewed failed to show an awareness of the needs of children in this area’.

There was failure to recognise or understand emotional disturbance in children. Merritt’s frustration is palpable when he writes of one person in charge of 100 children or more who claimed there were no emotionally disturbed children amongst them. Closer analysis revealed children from broken homes, that about 50 were wards of the state, some were illegitimate and others ‘she regarded as mentally retarded’. He continued”

When asked about the children’s behaviour she described temper tantrums, bed wetting, stuttering, wilful destructiveness, sulkiness and pilfering amongst the types of behaviour she encountered. That none of these children were emotionally disturbed and consequently had a special need for affection and understanding appears highly unlikely to say the least.

While not all institutions and staff groups were lacking in such understanding there was room for more concern for the emotional and environmental provision for children in care, Merritt concluded after his visits. In many instances  ignorance of the nature and stature of children’s’ needs, inadequate numbers of staff contributed to the malaise – a fact  noted by the British Care of Children Committee. There was a need to modify the organisational structure of such institutions, to train staff, to work to bring the situation in Victoria up to those standards practised in other parts of the world.

Despite resistance by some staff to scrutiny and training there was acceptance and a desire for change. There had been agitation in the press – about institutional conditions and about the lack of training amongst their staff. There were perceptions of abuse, that child welfare practices were not right.  In september 1952 Melbourne’s Argus newspaper had reported extensively on two fourteen year old girls had been incarcerated in the large Bluestone building Pentridge Gaol – a place for the worst criminals and the location of many executions.  That the rival Sydney press gloated that such an event as gaoling young teenage girls would not occur in its state rubbed salt into the wound.

By 1954 a new Children’s Act had been passed by parliament. Merritt’s report, drawing on the understandings provided by psychoanalytic theories and clinicians, promised much – and, at least professional training for staff. It was the beginning of a revolution.

A Peep Into the Subconscious – Adelaide 1951

28 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in 1950s, Conferences and Lectures, Newspaper reportage, South Australia: Newspapers

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This item is taken from Adelaide’s ‘Advertiser’ dated 27 October 1951. One can never be sure about the reliability of sources when writing history. So much data is borne of subjectivity; what is included or excluded is a matter for a writer long ago. One can catch a glimpse, partially, into the milieux past and try to work out what happened on the basis of that evidence. History occurs in a space between now and then.

In October 1951 a newspaperman, by the name of Frank Dunhill, embedded himself in a meeting with a group of people interested in psychoanalysis. The resulting sketch of ordinary folk, albeit tongue in cheek, reveals a little bit about Australia in the 1950s. It is about the cautious exploration of new ideas and people, the emerging influence of European refugees in this post war period, about women finding time despite childcare responsibilities and wannabe pretenders with agendas of their own. Perhaps this was actually a group of Melbournians meeting with Hungarian born Clara Geroe with the resulting piece sold for publication  in Adelaide?  Perhaps the meeting was, actually, held in Adelaide.  Was it that Dunhill, like his counterpart in Sydney, Sidney J Baker, was knowledgeable about psychoanalysis – much more than he let on?  If anyone knows more about Frank Dunhill,  or indeed the people who attended these meetings, I will be pleased to hear from them.

Let us listen to Frank:

“There is more in psychoanalysis that meets the subconscious eye.

I know, because this week I attended the first meeting of a group of amateur Adelaide psychoanalysts who want to meet every week and talk about it.

Psychoanalysis deals with the analysis of the unconscious mind. Eight people were in the group. They included a new Australian from Hungary, a former commercial traveller who had read nearly all the text-books on the subject by Freud, Jung, and Adenauer, ( interestingly, a German pacifist and peacemaker within Germany during WW2…) a widow with one child, and a married woman — mother of three children – who came to Australia from Holland about 16 years ago. The convener of the meeting, a new Australian, also from Hungary, said he had studied psycho analysis in Paris, but had left for Australia before getting his diploma. Sitting next to him was an avowed pacifist from Melbourne, who once read half a pocket-book edition of a text book by Freud.

Next  to him was another pacifist who was once psychoanalysed, but was never told the result. Our host was a Scot.

I found my psyche was my soul. It had nothing to do with ‘Psyche at the well’.

The discussion eventually centred on child education.  Our host said he had often applied psychology as distinct from psycho analysis, to correct his child when she mis behaved. If that failed he used force. He found a combination of the two ‘very effective.’ The discussion went on. A lot of technical jargon passed over my head, and I didn’t catch up with the thread of things until somebody discussed mak ing a date for the next meeting.

That took a bit of working out because several worked shifts in their jobs. But by submerging their superegos for the common good they finally decided on Sunday night. The two women then went home and took their restraining influences with them.

After that things went a bit haywire. The two pacifists tried to show how wars could be stopped by psycho-analysis, but the rest of the meeting disagreed. Somebody accused a pacifist of woolly thinking when he tried to draw an analogy between oranges on a tree and people in a country. d Finally, psycho-analysis was discarded altogether and the discussion became a straight-out debate on pacifism,. The two pacifists became almost aggressive in defence of their own cult. When the meeting broke up about 11 p.m. the convener said he thought a plan of action should be drawn up at the next meeting. That made our host laugh uproariously. He thought that was the idea of the meeting at his home.

But as everybody had become acquainted and had in a way bared their souls to each other, the evening had not been wasted. I said good-bye, and left with a new-found Freudian complex and a now subdued pacifist as my companion.