The Scottish Institute of Human Relations (SIHR) was an organisation founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1972, to promote a broader understanding of mental health and training in Talking therapies. Its origins go back to the practice of Dr W.R.D. Fairbairn, the Scottish psychoanalyst, and the return to Scotland in 1968 of Dr J. D. Sutherland, one-time medical director of the Tavistock Clinic in London. [1] Other founding contributors included T. Drummond Hunter, a senior NHS administrator, the educationalist Alan Harrow, the philanthropist Sheila Oppenheim, the Kirk minister and son-in-law of Lord Reith, Murray Leishman, and the psychiatrist, Dr J. Douglas Haldane. [2] [3]
The Institute ran conferences and courses, modelled on the multidisciplinary and psychoanalytic thinking of its sister organisation in London. It was, however, entirely independent with the benefit of having connections to members of the University of Edinburgh, government and enterprises in Scotland and its own independent educational and judicial systems. In the 1990s it opened an office in Glasgow to broaden its reach in Scotland. It ran successfully for 40 years. [4]
Due to insolvency, it was obliged to wind up in 2012 and was finally dissolved in 2014. [5]
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedia article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Eric Lansdown Trist was an English scientist and leading figure in the field of organizational development (OD). He was one of the founders of the Tavistock Institute for Social Research in London.
The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland is the senior antiquarian body of Scotland, with its headquarters in the National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh. The Society's aim is to promote the cultural heritage of Scotland.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established in 1783. As of 2021, there are around 1,800 Fellows.
His Majesty's Solicitor General for Scotland is one of the Law Officers of the Crown, and the deputy of the Lord Advocate, whose duty is to advise the Scottish Government on Scots Law. They are also responsible for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service which together constitute the Criminal Prosecution Service in Scotland.
Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between external people, as well as internal images and the relations found in them. Thinkers of the school maintain that the infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines the formation of its personality in adult life. Particularly, attachment is the bedrock of the development of the self or the psychic organization that creates the sense of identity.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kingdom and abroad. The Trust is based at the Tavistock Centre in Swiss Cottage. The founding organisation was the Tavistock institute of medical psychology founded in 1920 by Dr. Hugh Crichton-Miller.
William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn FRSE was a Scottish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and a central figure in the development of the Object Relations Theory of psychoanalysis. He usually used, and was known as and referred to as, "W. Ronald D. Fairbairn".
Henry James Samuel Guntrip was a British psychoanalyst known for his major contributions to object relations theory or school of Freudian thought. He was a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a psychotherapist and lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, Leeds University, and also a Congregationalist minister. He was described by Dr Jock Sutherland as "one of the psychoanalytic immortals".
Clan Sutherland also known as House of Sutherland is a Highland Scottish clan whose traditional territory is the shire of Sutherland in the far north of Scotland. The chief of the clan was also the powerful Earl of Sutherland, however in the early 16th century this title passed through marriage to a younger son of the chief of Clan Gordon. The current chief is Alistair Sutherland who holds the title Earl of Sutherland.
Freskin was a Flemish nobleman who settled in Scotland during the reign of King David I, becoming the progenitor of the Murray and Sutherland families, and possibly others.
Robert Douglas Hinshelwood is an English psychiatrist and academic. He is a Professor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex. He trained as a doctor and psychiatrist. He has taken an interest in the Therapeutic Community movement since 1974, and was founding editor of The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, having edited, with Nick Manning, Therapeutic Communities: Reflections and Progress.
Alan Sutherland was a Scottish artist based in Edinburgh. He died on 27 June 2019 at the age of 87.
John Derg Sutherland, also known as Jock Sutherland, was a Scottish physician, psychoanalyst and theorist, notable also for his role as Medical Director of the Tavistock Clinic.
(Johnston) Douglas Haldane MBE, FRCPsych was a pioneering Scottish child psychiatrist, who established Great Britain's first department of Child and Family Psychiatry in 1960 in Cupar in Fife. He opened the first family in-patient treatment unit in Scotland and introduced a range of innovative therapeutic art interventions. He sat on numerous policy working parties and led a variety of professional committees. He became a founding member of the Association for Family Therapy. He was a co-founder of the Scottish Institute of Human Relations. During his time as an academic, he devoted much time to influence the development of a government policy on Marriage. In the 1960s, he was also an elder of the Church of Scotland and a member of an early Iona Community group.
Matthew Leishman was a Scottish minister. He served as minister of Govan Old Parish Church for 53 years, during which he served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1858.
Michael D. Robbins is an American author, psychoanalyst, and former professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Francisco. His psychoanalytic research has focused on how the mind works in western and non-western cultures, particularly with regard to schizophrenia and other psychoses, language, creativity, conscious and unconscious mental processes.
Marista Muriel Leishman was an author and educator. She was the daughter and biographer of John Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC.