An interview with Dorothy Stock Whitaker

Abstract

The years raced backwards like a tape recorder in response to rewind button. When I stopped it, I was in a Manchester bookshop and it was 1967. I picked from shelf Psychotherapy through Group Process by Dorothy Stock Whitaker and Morton A. Lieberman. With mounting interest which rapidly became excitement, I read, and read on. Described here was a search to identify properties of and processes of therapeutic change. Here group, and individual in group, were examined in depth. This was a period when the and group were being endowed with magical all-embracing powers and with blind confidence, in protean situations. My own experience suggested quite otherwise -potent a might be, but this must surely be for ill as well as for good, for damage as well as for therapy. My cotherapist and I were searching for a model to identify what was happening in group, session by session, for individual and group. Of course I bought book, and from this time on we used Group Focal Conflict model for monitoring of our therapy groups. No longer were we exploring in dark: We now had a map and a compass. Our explorations were exciting and much emerged from them. Now, in July 1983, I was travelling across Pennines to interview Professor Whitaker for journal Group . The train stopped and started, admitting and discharging hikers, mothers and babies out for day, workmen, and others whose mission was not evident. I recalled how early in 1968 I heard to my amazement that Dr. Whitaker was living and working in Leeds. Could these things be? They could and indeed were so, and before long a of interested colleagues and myself were making regular journeys to Leeds for seminars and discussions with Dr. Whitaker. All too soon for us she became Professor of Social Work at University of York and regular contact could not be maintained. Happily, earlier this year Dr. Malcolm Pines enquired whether I was interested in interviewing her for Group . I most certainly was. The day set for interview was fine with big white clouds racing above and with blue sky sometimes getting upper hand. It might well rain, I thought, as I searched for a taxi outside vast railway station at Yorkonce one of most important in country. At University, I snatched a quick sandwich in cafeteria of Goodricke College, for I had regretfully declined Professor Whitaker's kind invitation to lunch on ground that it would certainly then be difficult for me to assume detachment appropriate for a