Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology

Most of these records were generated by Sidney Gray, the Institute's Secretary. They comprise constitutional material, minutes of meetings, annual reports and financial and administrative records relating to the running of the Institute as a charitable body.

The Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology is a not-for-profit organisation which was at one point the umbrella body for the Tavistock Clinic and the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, able to receive and disburse charitable donations and legacies in support of the activities of its constituent parts. It remains the parent body of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships.

The Tavistock Clinic was founded in 1920 as a psychotherapeutic out-patient clinic which, during the inter-war period, also developed influential programmes of research and training. Responding to the challenges of the Second World War, the range of the Clinic's interests broadened from psychiatry and clinical psychology to social psychology, sociology and anthropology. In 1946 the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations was established with the aim of applying psychoanalytic and related concepts to group and organisational life. It was initially part of the Clinic and subsequently, although separately incorporated, remained under the umbrella of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. Meanwhile, after the Second World War the Clinic itself entered the National Health Service, providing clinical services under the administration of the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. The two organisations continued to co-operate and in 1954 the Tavistock Association was founded to facilitate closer co-operation and integration. In 1994 the Tavistock Clinic joined with the Portman Clinic and became an independent NHS trust.

In 1957 the Family Discussion Bureau, which had been established in 1947 as part of the social work charity the Family Welfare Association, came under the auspices of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. In 1966 it became an autonomous unit within the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and changed its name to the Institute of Marital Studies. In 2005 it took on the clinical activities of London Marriage Guidance and is now known as the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships.

Further information about the history of the Tavistock family of organisations is available in the following sources:

H. V. Dicks, Fifty years of the Tavistock Clinic (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970)

Eric Trist and Hugh Murray, The Social Engagement of Social Science: A Tavistock Anthology, available online here .

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, "Our history", available on-line here

The following is an interim description of material that has been acquired since this collection was catalogued. This description may change when cataloguing takes place in future:

3 volumes received in October 2014 (acc. 2125), consisting of Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology Council minutes, Jul 1938-Feb 1956; Finance Committee minutes, May 1937-Oct 1948; and share register, 1929-1979