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allegati
il mio auspicio è che sempre maggiore spazio venga dedicato alla valutazione degli
interventi e dei loro esiti e che tale obiettivo rappresenti una priorità per tutti coloro che, a
vario titolo, intervengono e lavorano con gli adolescenti.
History, theory and technique - the Work of the portman clinic
by Valli Kohon, Portman Clinic, London
in england in 1931, the inst for the study and treatment of delinquency was founded
by a group of analysts who had become interested in the work of Grace pailthorpe with
soldiers in the trenches of ww1, she wrote studies in the psychology of delinquency, was
based on her experiences. edward Glover, ex-director of the Clinic of psychoanalysis in
london, had also become interested in the psychological aspects of criminality. Convinced
that psychoanalysis offered the best hope of tackling the problem, and inspired by
pailthorpe´s work, he developed the idea of opening a clinical branch of the institute
for the study and treatment of delinquency. He called it the psychopathic Clinic, the
purpose of which was the study, diagnosis and treatment of delinquency, addictions and
perversions.
the knowledge that developed out of Freud´s work expanded with the discoveries
made by psychiatrists about the psychological effects of war on the soldiers in ww1.they
studied the effects of the conditions of combat, the submission to authority and peer
pressure, the stirring up of feelings such as sadism or indifference to the suffering of others,
which were normally repressed and contained in ordinary life, as well as the effects of
extreme anxiety which can unleash dangerous and destructive reactions. Many of the
soldiers who were executed as deserters were pardoned posthumously many decades later,
when it was understood that their actions had been the result of the intolerable anguish
produced by the conditions of combat. under the influence of psychoanalysis, the idea
emerged that treatment could replace punishment in many cases where the pathology of
the individual could be the motive force behind criminal acts.
some psychiatrists who had worked with soldiers during the war became interested
in these matters, and psychoanalysts such as John Bowlby, Wilfred Bion, and W Gillespie
devoted themselves to developing the work of the clinic.
in 1948, the NHs was founded and the clinic became a state institution and was
renamed the portman Clinic, a reference to its central london address. it is now situated in
a victorian house in Hampstead, next door to the tavistock Clinic, with whom it is part of
an NHs trust, and close to both the Freud Museum and the anna Freud Centre.
The Portman Clinic Today
the multi-disciplinary staff at the portman is constituted by social workers,
psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses and child psychotherapists. they have all been trained as
psychoanalytic psychotherapists or psychoanalysts, which gives a very distinctive character
to the theoretical discourse and clinical practice at the Clinic. Based on Glover´s ideas,
assessment, research and treatment are the 3 principles that form the basis of the work
currently undertaken at the portman.
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