ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to trace the therapeutic community movement by means of its psychoanalytic and social links within institutional psychiatry during a time of change in the mental health care system in Britain. The application of psychoanalytic theory in institutions and organisations was presaged at the Military Neurosis Centre at Hollymoor Military Hospital in Northfield, Birmingham, England. The Cassel hospital in England clearly demonstrates how psychoanalysis was adapted and applied to the institutional treatment of patients in the context of a therapeutic community model. Psychotherapy at Cassel's family inpatient unit is theoretically influenced by British psychoanalysis: Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and her disciples and, in particular, the middle school clinicians, such as Winnicott and Balint. The hospital was separated into three units offering treatment to adults, adolescents, and families; each unit had a psychoanalyst consultant, a senior nurse, nursing staff trained in psychosocial nursing and both medical and non-medical psychotherapists.
