Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships

Records of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships and predecessor organisations, including papers relating to constitution, governance and organisational history, annual reports, and committee papers; administrative material relating to finance, premises and personnel; correspondence; evidence given to official bodies and investigations; material relating to research projects and training activities; papers relating to other organisations, in the UK and internationally; lectures, published and unpublished papers on marital therapy and related matters.

1920s-2000s

37 boxes

This collection was given to the library at Wellcome Collection by the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships in October 2012, with further accruals in July 2014 and October 2014.

Following the Second World War the London-based, voluntary social work agency the Family Welfare Association, (f.1869, as the Charity Organisation Society) began to experiment with work in the area of marriage guidance, including an initial scheme in collaboration with the Marriage Guidance Council which was not continued. In 1946 the Association established a Marriage Guidance Committee to oversee these initiatives.

This led to the establishment, in 1948, of the Family Discussion Bureau (FDB) as "an experimental casework unit" within the Family Welfare Association tackling the problems presented to social workers by clients with marital difficulties within a framework provided by the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. The Bureau developed a three-pronged approach to its work: to provide a service for people seeking help with marriage problems; to devise techniques appropriate to such a service and evolve a method of training caseworkers; and to explore issues around inter-personal relationships as they revealed themselves in marital difficulties. These themes have remained surprisingly consistent throughout the history of the organisation.

By 1948 the Marriage Guidance Committee had developed into a Marriage Welfare Committee and included Innes Pearse and Scott-Williamson of the Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham, and Isabel Menzies ( later Menzies Lyth) and A.T.M. Wilson of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. The Tavistock Clinic assisted with the training of the FDB's staff of social workers and a close relationship developed between the two organisations. Through this relationship, the work of the Bureau was heavily influenced by the theories of Klein, Winnicott, Balint, Sutherland and later by Bowlby and Bion. Although a personal analysis was not absolutely required of FDB staff, many did undertake a Freudian or Jungian analysis. Early FDB staff members included Enid Eichholz (later Balint) and Lily Pincus.

In 1957 the FDB left the Family Welfare Association and became part of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR). This had been founded in 1946 with the aim of applying psychoanalytic and open systems concepts to group and organisational life. TIHR was initially part of the Tavistock Clinic but then became a separately-incorporated body under the umbrella of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology (TIMP). In 1966, the FDB became an autonomous unit within TIMP. It changed its name to the Institute of Marital Studies (IMS) in 1968.

By this time, it had three main aims:

Service - to offer casework help to those experiencing stress in marriage;

Training - to evolve methods of training and consultation with allied professional groups in the handling of marital and related family problems;

Research / development - to develop scientific understanding of the dynamics of interpersonal relationships as they are revealed in marriage and from this understanding to refine methods of diagnosis and therapeutic techniques and to study the implications of marital interaction for family functioning.

During the 1970s and 1980s it expanded its research interests from clinical research based in the consulting room into action research projects looking at the relationship between the personal lives of couples and aspects of their external environment or the "outer and inner worlds of marriage". There were several important areas of reseach during this period. These included an exploration of the impact on the couple of having a first child. Working collaboratively with health visitors and the parents themselves, Institute of Marital Services staff examined the emotional adjustments required of the couple. Another initiative was on "the Present and Future of Marriage in Britain", which also became known simply as the "Marriage Project". Another project attempted to obtain a profile of a unit specializing in divorce court welfare work and to review the role of the divorce court welfare officer in divorce proceedings.

In 1979 legal responsibility for the IMS was formally transferred from the TIHR to the TIMP. In 1988 the IMS became the Tavistock Institute for Marital Studies, subsequently (in c.1993) the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute. 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

In Wellcome: Papers of Henry V Dicks (PP/HVD) and records of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology (SA/TIM).

Material held elsewhere: records of the Family Welfare Association are held at London Metropolitan Archives (A/FWA) as are patient case files from the Tavistock Clinic, 1930-1979 (H57).

This collection has been partially catalogued and the catalogued part is available to library members. Some items have access restrictions which are explained in the item-level catalogue records. Requests to view uncatalogued material are considered on a case by case basis. Please contact collections@wellcomecollection.org for more details.

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:

A small amount of material received in October 2014 (acc. 2125), consisting of:

Marriage Welfare Committee minute book, Nov 1948-Sep 1956

Family Discussion Bureau referral book, 1951-1952

Staff files relating to Lily Pincus, 1948-1988