Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

alliance within the BP-AS from the 1940s was an accommodation of two massive egos,
Freud’s trans-generational ego in Anna Freud, and her rival Melanie Klein who dominated
British psychoanalysis. In a very different vein, Symington had established a wide range of
contacts through his teaching seminars at the Tavistock Clinic (1978-1985). 119 This
foundation gave Symington an acceptable persona of psychoanalytic orthodoxy from which
he explored his prior theological training as a Roman Catholic priest resulting in his pivotal
text (Symington 1994), yet most of Symington’s writings on religion appeared after he had
left the United Kingdom for Australia, where he was able to develop an independence of
mind in his psychoanalytic pilgrimage (Symington 2007).
The role of the Tavistock is vital as psychoanalytic ideas interacted with psychiatry, clinical
psychology, infant observation, child, adolescent and group psychotherapies, organisational
consultancy, couple and family therapies and clinical research, providing a public platform
for dissemination to a wider professional audience. 120 The Tavistock environment
potentially offered a context less affected by the tensions and rivalries in the British
psychoanalytic world, allowing broader conceptions of psychoanalysis to be expressed, as
seen in the work of Coltart and Symington (Symington 1986; Coltart 1993c; Symington
2001).
119 These formed the basis of his highly regarded book The analytic experience (Symington 1986).
120 The Tavistock Clinic was founded in 1920, offering the first outpatient psychotherapy clinic in the United
Kingdom. Now the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, its history includes many notable and
pioneering psychoanalysts, and its current building in Swiss Cottage is presided over by a brooding statue of
Freud. For more details follow the link to http://www.tavi-port.org/sites/default/files/Our%20history_0.pdf.
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