Henderson and beyond: Did the Northfield experiments influence Henderson Hospital and its Legacy?

Abstract

This article is the talk I gave at the GASI Winter Workshop 2018 and looks at whether the Northfield Experiments influenced the development of the Henderson Hospital and other democratic therapeutic communities that arose from it. It describes Maxwell Jones’ work with military personnel before and at the Henderson Hospital, his ‘marginal consciousness’ of, and the similarities with, the Northfield Experiments especially in the use of psychodrama. It describes the later indirect influence of Northfield on the Henderson Hospital, through Foulkes and group analysis. The article then looks at the legacy of the Henderson Hospital in terms of other therapeutic communities and how those in prisons in the UK seem to be surviving better than those in the mental health system as they have been ‘owned’ by the system and so not seen as counter-cultural. In having a place in our society’s wish to keep offenders behind bars they are more able to withstand the effect of the changes in society whereby everything is wanted or accessible instantly and where change is the only constant, drawing on Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity.