A YEAR'S TRIAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 150, 22 December 1938, Page 11

A YEAR'S TRIAL

MENTAL HOME EXPERIMENT

PSYCHO-ANALYSTS TO

ATTEND

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.)

LONDON, December 1. The experiment of permitting a small number of psycho-analysts to be present to observe the reactions of mental patients when they are being examined is to be tried at St. Bernard's Hospital, one of the L.C.C. mental homes, at Southall, Middlesex.

This announcement was made at a meeting of the L.C.C. by Mr. J. R. Oldfield, chairman of the Mental Hospitals' Committee. He said that the request had been made by the Director of Research at the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. The superintendent and the medical staff at the hospital were willing to co-operate in the arrangement, which would involve the attendance at the hospital from time to time of two or three persons who were hot medically qualified but who were in training with a view to their practising psy-cho-analysis. It was unusual for them to get experience of major cases, and it had been represented that acquaintance with them would provide a useful background for other experience.

He added that the experiment would be permitted for a year, after which the matter would be reviewed.

Dame Barrie Lambert, objecting to the proposal, said that outside people j would be able to attend "a ferreting out of intimate details of the patients' private lives an(J observe their reacI tions while being examined."