From History of Psychiatry Volume 34:1: "The processes and context of innovation in mental healthcare: Oxfordshire as a case study", guest edited by Neil Armstrong and John Hall.
The methodological approach of the Special Issue
The authors of these articles are from differing disciplinary and professional backgrounds, and several have had atypical career paths. They joined the project over a period of time after David Millard and Craig Fees first met in 2000. Millard had been drawn into formal historical research during the previous decade by his friend and historian of psychiatry, Hugh Freeman. In the early 1970s, Millard had taken the unusual step of moving from his post as a consultant psychiatrist in Birmingham to become a lecturer in Applied Social Studies at the University of Oxford, and between 1984 and 1991 he was editor of the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities. Craig Fees is an archivist and oral historian by background, and was at that time archivist for the Planned Environment Therapy Trust (PETT) Archive and Study Centre.
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Peter Agulnik completed his senior psychiatric training in Oxford with Bertram Mandelbrote, and in 1978 became a consultant in rehabilitation psychiatry and psychotherapy in Oxford. David Kennard came to Oxford in 1970, working within Mandelbrote’s service as a clinical psychologistundertaking research on the Phoenix Unit, and developing with him and Agulnik the nascent Ley Clinic Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Service. Kennard subsequently became a substantial contributor to the literature on therapeutic communities and also edited the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, and supported the development of the Association of Therapeutic Communities. Thus, Millard, Fees, Agulnik and Kennard have all had long-term engagement with therapeutic community practice.
John Hall came to Oxford in 1980 as head clinical psychologist to the Oxfordshire Mental Healthcare Trust, working clinically with Agulnik. He was a collaborator in the Wellcome-funded project that led to the paper by Turner et al. (2015), and he became a Senior Research Associate in the then Centre for Medical History at Oxford Brookes University. Jonathan Leach worked for 10 years as a staff member in a number of roles at Restore, and after being a lecturer in disability studies and obtaining a doctorate on student mental health he became the lead lecturer in mental health at the Open University. Jonathan has also had personal experience of using mental health services after developing PTSD. Neil Armstrong, an anthropologist with an interest in mental health, bureaucracy, and collaborative research techniques, joined the team in 2016. He currently teaches at Harris Manchester College in the University of Oxford. He is also Associate Editor for the British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin, and John Hall is a member of the Committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists History of Psychiatry Special Interest Group.
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Our aim has been to uncover and elicit complicated human stories beyond those recorded in conventional archival records, without any particular or premeditated political orientation. We have made use of oral history through: interviews (which were conducted for the article by Leach et al.); witness seminars (a series of which were held for the article by Millard et al.); unarchived and unpublished papers (alongside the archival and published record); and drawing on the lived professional experience within the research group. We have thus sought to be attentive not to silenced populations, or mechanisms of power and inequality, but rather to the untidy backstage of service innovation.
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Oral history colloquially brings ‘life’ to history, and history to life, but in events such as witness seminars – where multiple actors who had multiple roles and were often involved in the same events at different times and in different places, are brought together with ‘witnesses’ from outside – we gain something more. As the participants interact, we have insight into the shared language, symbols, assumptions and cultures which underlay events, as well as the shape and direction given to events by divergences, conflicts, blind-spots and vagaries of personality and relationships. We also learn from re-lived experience. This includes critical and reflective insights of witness seminar participants on events, and on themselves; on the nature and reliability of documents, which theythemselves sometimes produced; and on the interpretations of the events which are offered by other participants and by other commentators, including historians.
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The unpublished and uncatalogued papers on which these articles are partly based were generated by the several voluntary bodies and charities that were vehicles for many of the changes, and some are held by the Littlemore Local History Society. Peter Agulnik and John Hall have been or are trustees of several of these charities, and thus had knowledge of papers and reports that were retained. Some of the papers were written by volunteers and unqualified staff, some of whom were also trustees of the charities, or academics in another field, their multiple role-occupancy further contributing to a multi-layered narrative.
An important starting point was the PETT Archive and Study Centre. This was instituted initially within a therapeutic community for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties in Gloucestershire, and was devoted to the history and work of enabling and therapeutic environments generally. As an archive it actively sought out and engaged with organizations, individuals and institutions, as well as students and researchers, and took an active part as a working and contributing member of the enabling environments and organizations themselves. The role of the Archive, particularly initially, was one of anchorage, in providing a common and persisting back-ground point of reference and creating an actively facilitating environment, as well as practical support, and from 2010 sought to support historical projects, of which this is one.
