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The selection below is taken from the Methodology section, pp. 19-20, of “Innovation in mental health care: Bertram Mandelbrote, the Phoenix Unit and the therapeutic community approach”, by David Millard, Peter Agulnik, Neil Armstrong, Craig Fees, John Hall, Jonathan Leach, History of Psychiatry 2023, Vol. 34(1) 17-33. From a special issue of History of Psychiatry called "The processes and context of innovation in mental healthcare: Oxfordshire as a case study", Guest edited by Neil Armstrong and John Hall. The issue grew out of and culminated in what we came to call the Oxdord Project. |
Methodology...
The anchoring point has been the Planned Environment Therapy Trust (PETT) Archive and Study Centre (1989–2018), abbreviated hereafter as the PETT Archive. The collections, site and plant were transferred to the Mulberry Bush Organisation at the end of 2018, and renamed The Planned Environment Therapy Archive and the Mulberry Bush Third Space (MB3) respectively. The collections hold a unique and internationally significant body of materials related to therapeutic communities and other enabling environments. The Archive collected academic papers written by Bertram Mandelbrote and associated material. The latter includes two oral history interviews with Mandelbrote conducted by the archivist Craig Fees in 1995 and 1996, in which, following his retirement, Mandelbrote reflected on his own career.
We also organised and drew on oral histories collected through witness seminars and individual interviews (Tansey, 2008). Four witness seminars were held in 2014 and 2015. The participants were individuals known to several of the authors and whose careers had included some significant involvement with Bertram Mandelbrote. Many already knew each other well. Meetings included structured questioning and spontaneous interaction. Sessions were recorded and transcribed. Printed transcripts were returned to all participants, who were invited to edit their own contribution for purposes of clarity. In addition, and making use of a Wellcome-funded pilot project ‘Reconceptualising Recovery’, a research assistant took part in the witness seminars and also interviewed eight individuals who offered differing perspectives of Mandelbrote, and the developments that sprang from his initiatives.2 Those interviews further informed this and related papers derived from this research. The recordings and transcripts edited by the contributors are held at the Archive.
A further witness seminar/reunion of former Phoenix Unit staff was held in October 2016 at the PETT Archive and Study Centre, from which much of the material in this paper is drawn. There were 23 participants, including working and retired psychiatrists, medical psychotherapists, nurses, a clinical psychologist, social workers, an occupational and an art therapist. Collectively their experience of the Phoenix Unit covered the period from 1965 until Mandelbrote’s retirement in 1988. There was a lot of mutual recognition among the participants, reflecting the varying lengths of time participants had been associated with the unit or the hospital’s A division. The reunion consisted of six recorded and subsequently transcribed and edited sessions totalling just under six hours. The recordings and transcripts, edited by the contributors, are held at the PETT Archive. Greater detail and a critique of the reunion is to be found in a paper by Armstrong (2018) reflecting on clinical expertise in a bureaucratic age. The recordings were also made available to Leach, who comments on the ‘chaotic’, ‘mad’ ambience of the unit (Leach, 2019). Our aim throughout was to base our analysis on personal experience, intended to develop a more nuanced history illustrating Mandelbrote’s personal impact and influence.
Footnote 2: The grant ‘Reconceptualising Recovery Through Provision For Psychologically Vulnerable Persons In Oxford, 1959–1997: A Case Of Positive Deviance?’ Wellcome Trust-funded research project through the Department of Anthropology, University of Oxford. The PI was Elisabeth Hsu; the RA was Tu Thuy Phan.
References
Armstrong N (2018) What leads to innovation in mental healthcare? Reflections on clinical expertise in a bureaucratic age. British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin 42(5): 184–187.
Tansey EM (2008) The witness seminar technique in modern medical history. In: Cook HJ, Hardy A and Bhattacharya S (eds) Social Determinants of Disease. London: Orient Press, 279–295.
