Category Archives: Medical Pracitioners

‘Psychotherapy in Practice’: Dr John Springthorpe – Melbourne Physician – Australasian Medical Congress -1924.

29 Tuesday Nov 2022

Posted by in 1920s, John Springthorpe, Medical Pracitioners

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FROM SPRINGTHORPE’S PAPER TO THE AUSTRALASIAN MEDICAL CONGRESS 1924.

What did the Australian medical profession actually say about Freud and psychoanalysis during the 1920s? Why was there so much antipathy towards it? In an attempt to understand this, I have been reading the Australasian Medical Journals from the early twentieth century. John Springthorpe was a former lecturer in Medicine at the University of Melbourne, recognised for his interest in psychotherapy, and the relationship between mind and body, had some thoughts which he delivered at the Australasian Medical Congress in 1924. Springthorpe was one of the most senior practitioners of medicine in Melbourne Australia from 1883 until his death in 1933. In this paper, Springthorpe is most scathing about Freud’s thought as he asserts the superiority of his own methods, derived, in part from the practice of hypnosis. These are the trio: analysis, suggestion and re-education. Here are some of the statements Springthorpe made about his theory of mind, the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis and Freud.

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‘Psychotherapy is very complex…. the present position is very complex. It involves heredity, psychical as well as physical, comparative physiology and anthropology, the relations of mind to matter, of instinct to intelligence, of the conscious to the unconscious, of the place of the emotions, the intelligence and the will, of the endocrine glands and the sympathetic nervous system; upon each and all of which each must satisfy himself’.

‘ There is advantage, also, in co ordinating, if possible, all under one guiding principle – just as matter and life have been brought under their unities of origin. To state my own opinion upon this even more open question without dogmatism, I may say that I find myself a psychical monist and regard it probable that our mind, though at present confined in limited material setting, informed as to realities by a few imperfect scouts and reacting through material expressions, but possibly destined after trial and testing ultimately and always to use their little freedom of will in accord with the supreme’.

‘In psychotherapy two intellects are concerned, the operator’s and the patient’s, and, of course, the ingenuity of the former should be used purely for the needs of the latter. Psychoanalysis is thus doubly personal. It is interesting to note that whilst Freud basis his analysis on a fundamental emotion, Coue, ends his suggestion with “Know thyself”‘.

‘In my experience each patient should suggest his own analysis and any set plan is inadvisable’.

‘Each case is a case to itself and there are no watertight classifications… For pushing analysis into the subconscious. the main methods are the “relaxation and mild hypnotism” of Haydn Brown, the “auto-Hypnosis” of Coue, the deep hypnosis of Bramwell,and the “psychoanalysis” of Freud…. In my experience, however, the need thus analytically “tapping the unconscious” is rare; therapeutically the subconscious requires rather to be influenced by indirect than to be controlled by direct suggestion’.

‘Freud’s psychoanalysis calls for special attention. It mus suffice here to say that his view of causation is now abandoned, save by a few extremists, in favour of the wider and more applicable post-Freudian, that his his methods of procedure ( free association, word association, symbolic interpretation, dream analysis and so forth) are now held to be rarely necessary, often misleading, at times dangerous and almost always cumbersome and tedious, whilst his views on repression and mental conflicts seem largely overstatements and in some cases contrary to definite laws. The value of his contribution to the position is, thus, that of an investigator not of an interpreter and at bottom his methods tend to an intellectual misdirection of fundamental suggestions. His ‘Symbols’ again can prove anything that is in the mind of the operator. And as regards the actual results, it would be amusing if it were not pathetic to see psycho-analysts laboriously seeking and proudly proclaiming results that are often producible to even greater advantage and in a fraction of the time by simpler forms of suggestion. After all treatment by analysis is pre-eminently the province of an educated profession not of the academician or theologian’.

John Springthorpe, ( 1924), Psychotherapy in Practice, in Transactions of Congress, Supplement to the Medical Journal of Australia, 21 June 1924, pp, 448-451.

Dr H. Owen Chapman : Neurosis in General Practice (Medical Journal of Australia, Sept 12, 1953).

20 Sunday Jun 2021

Posted by in Archive work, Biography, Diaries and Source material, Medical Pracitioners, Newspaper reportage, Wandering through the Medical Journal of Australia

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‘ … you may be interested to hear something of your book, ‘The Doctor, The Patient and the Illness’… ( Chapman to Balint 19 July 1958).

One of the delights for researchers trawling through archives is the discovery of people who have done their bit for the cause! It may be little more than a brief a letter, or an article: the outcome of years of their own research. Sadly they have faded away, their memories lost in a plethora of documents constituting our archives. It all adds texture and depth to the understanding of past sensibilities. What people thought was important in the past may look very different from the present. Their thoughts and ideas framed within the social unconscious of the period, are also formative of our own. It is one of the reasons why archive retention and preservation is so important. It holds the present accountable. And we need to know how we got to here from there.

I first found the General Practitioner, Dr Herbert Owen Chapman, in the Balint Papers at the British Psychoanalytical Society. He had written a letter introducing himself to Michael Balint in 1958. Balint’s book, The Doctor, the Patient and the Illness had come to Chapman’s attention. He wanted to congratulate Balint and tell him about his own research into the incidence of neurotic illness in Medical Practice. It led me to Chapman’s article, a piece of research into presentations of people with neurotic conditions – emotional distress- in General Practice published in 1953. Based on three years research the article is, I think, one of the first pieces of research into this arena.

Chapman also opens a new doorway for research when, in his introduction, he speaks of his return from Missionary Hospital Work in Central China in 1945 after twenty-five years. It serves to contextualize the life and career of this remarkable man. Owen Chapman joined the Christian Medical Mission and, in 1940 was the Superintendent of the Hankou Mission Hospital. In China, he says, he had developed an interest in neurotic illness and its treatment. He was witness to the 1926 -27 revolution in China, and published a book about China’s history and the influence of the Russian Community Part in 1929. A smaller work examining Church history in China was published in 1968. His article, Neurosis in General Practice, the outcome of three years Locum Tenems work following his return to Australia in 1946, was published in the Medical Journal of Australia dated 12 September 1952.

Born in New South Wales in on 6 February 1884, Chapman qualified in Medicine and, from 1910 took locum tenems work around Western Australia Newspaper articles show he was deeply involved in the Wesleyan church. His brother, Burgoyne Chapman and father, Benjamin Chapman were also significant figures in the Methodist Church. Owen joined the Army as a Medical Officer during the Great War and was discharged after an admission to hospital for ‘Sinusitis’. He departed for China in 1920.

Chapman’s research into the treatment of neurosis in Australian General Practice extended over three years from 1947 to 1949. It included 23 different locum assignments in thirteen new practices. Ten other terms were re engagements. Some practices were large and wealthy, he wrote. Others varied in size and financial stability. He covered inner city practices, rural and coastal practices as well as mining and industrial towns. The duration of the appointment ranged from seven days to thirty one days. A total of 213 cases were considered.

Chapman observed the difficulty of finding time in a busy practice to put patients at their ease so as to engage their trust sufficiently to explore underlying issues. However most of the active cases ‘were not buried so deeply’, nor was the resistance strong, although cases of where the condition had a sexual origin were difficult to reach. ‘But the most startling difference [lay] in the duration of the cases’. Where classical psychoanalysis determined treatment to be over several years, this was impracticable for medical practices. Chapman found that many people had a positive response to treatment based on Carl Rogers six to fifteen weekly contacts. Longer cases, usually treated by psychoanalysis, were often more severe.

Chapman was critical of medical training which offered little on the theory and practice of psychotherapy. In part this was due to a generalized fear of psychiatry in the community. DF Buckle had also noted that as a result the burden of treatment had fallen upon psychologists, teachers, social workers and the patient’s families. Neurotic illness was, Chapman, continued, ‘the greatest therapeutic problem confronting us today, whose final solution must remain for future years and a new generation of medical practitioners and statesmen’. There could be a beginning, now. He urged the development of psychiatric training, and for non specialists, experience in psychiatry. Such practitioners needed to be ‘introverts’, sensitive to and keenly interested in the human aspect of their practice. He recommended reading such as Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, Ross’s Çommon Neuroses‘ and Rogers’s “Counselling and Psychotherapy“, as well as for more advanced practitioners, Alexander and French’s “Psychoanalytic Therapy”.

This is a thoroughly researched piece Chapman sought to show the importance of this field of medical practice, concluding, hat it was but a beginning. He hoped there would be others who would take up the ideas and thoughts he was expressing. Balint’s book, The doctor, the patient and the illness clearly resonated for him.

References

H Owen Chapman to Michael Balint, 19 July 1958, Balint Papers, Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

H. Owen Chapman, The Chinese Revolution, 1926–27: A Record of the Period Under the Communist Control as Seen from the Nationalist Capital, Hankow. London: Constable & Co., Ltd. 1928.

H Owen Chapman, Neuroses in General Practice. Medical Journal of Australia, 12 September 1953, pp. 407-415.

H Owen Chapman, The second Reformation; a historical study: With a foreword by C. P. FitzGerald and a postscript by Keith Buchanan, Sydney, Times Press, 1968.

AMONG THE NEW BOOKS (1929, January 26). The Methodist (Sydney, NSW : 1892 – 1954), p. 4. Retrieved June 20, 2021, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article155297565