INTERVIEW WITH PAT RADFORD
SH:
What impression did you have of the Anna Freud Centre when you first arrived?
PR
Terrified
SH:
Terrified of what?
PR: Well, actually I was a Psychiatric Social Worker, working with Lydia
Tischler, so I already knew about the place. I was already in analysis….I was to
that extent a bit familiar with it.
SH
Okay, right, what was your background before you arrived to do the training?
PR
Was rather a lot!
SH: Do you want to give me a sketch of what you did before then? It would be very
interesting.
PR
Well I studied history and then taught history to adolescent boys. My
mother insisted I should have an actual profession so I then trained to be a teacher,
got out as soon as I could, went into the Civil Service in education, got a bursary to
do Social Sciences in order to do Sociology in order to train as a Medical Social
Worker!
SH:
Wow, I see, you did a huge amount lot before you came to do the training!
PR: From there, I had a choice of doing a Mental Health Diplomawhich involved
me going back to LSE, or going to the Tavistock to do intensive social work. I
decided to do the Mental Health Diploma and so did a PSW (Psychiatric Social
Work) training. From there, I actually got more and more,interested in
psychoanalysis. It was a question of progress…something inside me. I then applied
for the Hampstead Clinic training and again I made my choice as partly I knew
Lydia. And so I got the training with Ruth Thomas who was the then Head of
training who really was as important a person as Anna Freud was. This was a
change that happened gradually. She was in charge of the teaching which was more
important as the primary source of what was then available as well as being
alongside the research work. At the time, your supervisor and analyst were one of
the same people. There were five people in my year. Do you want to know who?
SH:
Yes, that would be really interesting..
PR
There was Kay Rees who is now in America. She went there quite quickly,
Lilian Weitzner, also American and went back, Dale Meers who also went back,
Alex Holder and myself
But towards the second year, Audrey Gavshon joined us as she had had a baby and
at that time no women were supposed to have babies during training, and she was
thrown out of the training and there was revolt from the rest of us and she had to
come back!
SH: Wow, things have changed dramatically since then. So many people who do the
training have babies whilst training.
PR
Oh yes!
SH
What year did you arrive at the AFC?
PR
Do you know what? It must have been around 1962 or so, I think.
SH
When you said you felt “terrified”, can you say a little more what you meant?
PR
Well what I think was terrifying at first was going to the first Wednesday
meeting. Wednesday meetings were an event. Every student had to present at least 2
papers exactly 50 minutes long in front of the library in house 21. It was still just
one beautiful room back then. The room was also packed. Miss Freud would sit in
the front row with Dorothy Burlingham. Miss Freud was usually wearing more or
less the same dress - I can’t remember seeing her in anything different - and a long
string of beads, which she would fiddle with.
SH:
It does sound quite terrifying!
PR
Yes, Miss Freud was quite small, not much bigger than me. And there was
Dorothy Burlingham. Nobody else sat in that front row. Except as well a doctor
who came over with Freud too, I can’t remember her name. And Ruth Thomas.
Mrs Burlingham and Mrs Ludovich and Mrs Lantos .
SH
Really staring in front of you!
PR
Yes, and the speaker sat on a platform.
SH
Were you always by yourself or did someone chair the meetings?
PR
By yourself
SH
That changed in recent decades.
PR
Yes. So you gave your paper.
SH
Who else was in the room?
PR
All the students, obviously, they would sit in the back and never open their
mouths. And all the hoi polloi, not the hoi polloi, all the people interested ..
SH
So, the format of the meeting.was that you’d give a paper for 50 minutes and then
time for questions.
PR: Half an hour for questions and then Miss Freud would get up as soon as you
finished the paper and give an absolutely brilliant criticism of it which would bring
out all the salient points in the case, in a way, which I thought when I did my first
paper, that was as if she had read them beforehand! I knew that she hadn’t. I knew
that, as I had finished mine 5 minutes before I presented it!
SH:
Do you remember your first one? Was it quite early in your training?
PR
Yes, you had to do it after a year. I do remember it, because Agi Bene was
my first supervisor, and I was her first supervisee. It was a terrible case. Anna
Freud actually apologised for giving me this impossible case because it was her idea
that the training should be based on neurotic cases and, my first case, this girl, was
an absolute sadist. Anyway, this was really so terrifying. It was very hot in the
room, and most of us would find it very hard not to snooze. Miss Freud was there
taking it all in and then come up with this marvellously impressive summary.
SH: Impressive. Do you remember the first time you actually talked to her?
What impression did you have of her as a person?
PR: Frightening, Uh, I wasn’t one of her favourite pupils. She didn’t really
approve of the English school at all in the sense that she thought they were not
sufficiently in tune with the Freudian self. If you did something like a watered
down psychiatric social work degree, if you came in on that route, you were not
considered quite as holy as others were! I was probably not that different from how
I am now, ready to be quite argumentative and I wasn’t particularly one of the
people who fitted in with her. I had a wonderful training, as we all had at that
particular time. Research was all over the place.
Joe Sandler’s Index had also started. If you were obsessional it was wonderful,
because every single defence, everything, had to be put on a card, based on your
weeklies. The one thing with Miss Freud, was you had to do your weeklies. You
could do your daily notes for your supervisor, but your weeklies had to be short and
you had to pull out your themes, and really from the beginning you were expected
to think theoretically
SH:
And where did those weeklies go?
PR: Into the index…and so you then made papers, cards for every single thing,
every single defence you had to make a card of.
SH
It was an invaluable resource.
PR
It was. You would have roughly 200 cards and you would have a supervisor,
for me that was Maria Berger who is still around.
SH
And what was done with these cards.
PR
When they were indexed, you had to present them to Joe Sandler and that
was terrible. Because he always knew more. You had to see how far you really
understood the theory.
SH
You would walk into the room and it was just Joe Sandler.
PR
And the whole group were there, all the people who belonged to the Index.
And at the same time, a Concept Group was starting. We had to take a concept
from Freud -something like ambivalence or obsessional neurosis -, and each of us
had to do one. We would go through every volume and, say if you did ambivalence,
you would go through every mention of ambivalence and fit into a development
throughout the volumes..you then presented that to Humberto Nagera..and it was
discussed by the whole group and pulled to pieces. Finally it was written up as the
Group’s Concept!
SH
That sounds like a gruelling experience
PR
Oh we knew our Freud!
SH
So in terms of the ingredients of the training back then, could you summarise?
PR
We each had to do at least 3 children and an adolescent case and usually a
fourth..alongside that. We also had to do at least 3 twice weekly cases. The other
cases were 5 times a week. Each case had a supervisor. There was weekly
supervision. You had seminars all of which were at night and started at 8pm
SH
And this was based at the Centre or in people’s homes?
PR
At the Centre, it was awful. I was living out in Kensington at the time
without a car. Nobody had cars then, and I never got home before 10.30pm and Mrs
Ludovic and Mrs Lantos , they were friends, had been in Hungary together, not
sure, used to compete with each other to provide us with snacks. We were all
hungry as we usually hadn’t had time to eat before the seminar. Various people
would come in to add something.
SH
And you would have to fit analysis in too. When would that have been?
PR
Half 7 in the morning!
SH
Not much time for sleep and recreation?
PR
No, no
SH
Were you quite a tight knit cohort then?
PR
Yes, we were, actually, some were a little competitive at times!
SH
Do you think the training has attracted particularly competitive people?
PR
In every group/cohort I met, there would be some coalition of different types
of people and this just was very friendly rivalry.
SH
You would not expect the training or want it to attract the same type of people,
but rather a spectrum.
PR
Yes, thats the way people were. In the common room, every person went in
there who was working , various people, all supervisors, students, everyone, you
came into , you had just seen a patient, you would immediately say what was going
on or not, you had all these people there like Hansi Kennedy, so you learned so
much in the common room.
SH
So, besides the clinical work going on there, there was the Index and the
Concept Groups?
PR: Oh yes, and we also formed a Borderline Group, which covered everything
and though Miss Freud didn’t approve of it, she agreed we should carry on. We
had a fantastic thing of 5 people taking on 5 extremely disturbed children 5 times a
week. These were all discussed in the Borderline Group. We presented papers and
Miss Freud had to accept that progress could be made by using psychoanalysis to
sort out what was wrong and what could help. And there were again lots of papers.
SH
Yes I am aware of that.
SH
How integrated was Centre back then in terms of the clinical and research work?
PR: Yes, there was the Common Room - anybody went there.
People who worked on the research side of things were also clinicians.
Everyone was clinically trained at the Centre. Some were more on the research
side, but never only on the research side.
SH
You had receptionists back then too?
PR
Someone called Mrs Nolan. There were several staff who had babies and
Mrs Nolan used to make a creche in the common room and look after the babies
while people were seeing their patients.
SH
And you worked at the time at the Hampstead Clinic while you did the training.
PR
Yes I was working at the clinic as a Psychiatric Social Worker when
I started the training. Then I became more full time and I got a scholarship from
the Ministry of Health
SH
How was it when you started and you were based partly in the Hampstead Clinic?
PR
Hard work getting there because you had started the seminars.
SH
If you had to sum up the 3 salient things you learned most from your training
what would you say they were?
PR
The cases were! And you were helped because of your supervision. Every
single case was supervised again by Miss Freud so she could tell you where your
case was as she read all the weeklies. So the actual clinical work, but it was all
intertwined with the concept and the theoretical work we were doing all the time so
they gelled. And you could use what you were doing to understand in your training
from your seminars, supervision, with your index work, concept group, borderline
group. We had the lot!
SH
Yes, it sounded unique and intense!
SH
And who was the most impressive person you were taught by at the time? I know
you’ve spoken about some of them already.
PR
Ruth Thomas was outstanding. I don’t know ..She was a figure and an
authority, but she was also a good clinician herself. She had a lot of influence over
Miss Freud and kept her on the training that was going to enhance the students.
You could always fall back on her as the person who would help you out if you had
problems. She was also a very good supervisor….she was also willing to allow the
students to speak.
SH
Who were the other luminaries and people you were in awe of whilst there?
PR
Agi Bene-Moses was a very good clinician. She was also very capable of
being able to argue with Miss Freud, one of the things you needed to be able to do.
She was very inspirational. I had a stammerer patient who was a sadist and we
made progress with her. This girl even brought in a dog to torment me. I got a
reputation for taking on awful cases, particularly aggressive cases because I wasn’t
really frightened of aggression.
SH
But you were allocated cases?
PR
Miss Freud would have the last word on it and your supervisor would decide
and you would get it. But you had to fit into the categories so I took on a latency
case but he had obsessional neurosis and Miss Freud insisted that he was carried on
in treatment and that I was to take him on. I am not good with obsessive neurotics.
SH
I suppose you learn which types of patients you feel most comfortable taking on?
PR
Oh yes. And I still won’t take on obsessionals unless I am absolutely forced
ot to.
SH:
So to sum up your training?
PR
Fantastic..of course, quite intimidating.
SH:
Did it need to have that essence?
PR
Only with Miss Freud! And for most people..it did make a difference if you
were more a Miss Freud sort of person or not. I wasn’t.
SH
Was the atmosphere during the training such that it was hard to switch off from
training and maybe have informal discussion about other things?
PR
We talked about everything in the common room. Generally, we went out to
have a meal.
SH
But not with Miss Freud?
PR
We had concerts with Miss Freud. For her birthdays, everybody, all of us,
students and staff, all presented at them. They were hilarious
SH
At her birthdays?
PR
For example, one thing we did was from Don Giovanni. Some of us could
sing, and we did an excerpt as a satire about what was going on then.
We did all sorts of.things - .we did a supervision session! We performed for her.
SH
Did she perform?
PR
No but she would be very appreciative. She loved it.
SH
Where was it?
PR
In the library
SH
They didn’t carry on with that tradition!
PR
No . Peter Wilson, he was a brilliant pianist. And another ,Trevor Locke.
Together played magnificently. Lots of extracurricular skills and talents!
SH
What were yours?
PR
Singing
SH
Did you manage to keep up with it whilst training?
PR
I still go to a choir
SH
Wonderful
PR
Rose, myself and Pauline, I think, we went to the Camden choir while we
were training.
SH
Sure. It was very therapeutic to have that as an outlet.
SH
Thinking about how things have changed, your experience, you stayed involved at
the Centre for a very long time?
PR
I stayed right until a few years ago. I didn’t leave until long after I finished
at the NHS which was when I was 65,. Miss Freud asked me to help out at a local
primary school in St John’s Wood. There is an interesting history to this. The
person who by then was Head of this school had years before come over from
Austria with her 3 year old son. She had written to Anna Freud to say that she had
heard about the nursery, which was then under Manna Friedman, and that her little
boy was a refugee, as Anna Freud had been, so how about a place? Anna Freud
gave her a place in the nursery for her son.
And so years later when she became Headmistress, she wanted to pay back a little so
she asked someone from Anna Freud Centre to help out.. That carried on until
recently when the Headmistress retired.
SH
Yes, and others remained involved like Norka.
PR
Yes, Norka was involved. She came in because I was supervising her. I
started supervising…, back then you had to do 5 analytic cases after your training
before you were allowed to be a supervisor of analytic cases. But that’s changed as
you can’t get the analytic cases now!
I was at the primary school and left to do whatever I liked. I had a roving
commission in there
SH
How do you think their experience as a student differed from yours at the Anna
Freud Centre - and the training in particular?
PR
Well in my own sweet way, I just did the supervision. I don’t think they had
anything like as much theoretical experience to be linked in with their clinical work.
We were incredibly lucky with all we were doing and talking. All the concept and
index groups and borderline groups were once a week.
SH
Such a rich resource for learning and talking.
PR
And arguing!
SH
So the training lacked some of this theoretical basis back in your day?
PR
And the time to question things.
SH
Other things that were different about the training?
PR
On the whole the students got younger, so very few had much experience. It
is very helpful if you have been doing something and worked with other people and
bring that to your training. I think it’s a pity.
SH
What are your links with the place now?
PR
Much less but for a long time I was still supervising when the training was on
so I did used to go in for meetings quite often. At the primary school, parent groups
had a free for all, so any parent who wanted to come to this meeting for an hour
once a fortnight, would just come and I would be there as a sort of person to keep it
going. When I finished which was the insistence of the AFC who decided I was too
old and couldn’t do it anymore, I then finished at the school. The Headmistress
retired, and I didn’t like the new one very much, so I stopped there. I still had a
group of parents from the school which had been tremendously helpful for them
and after I retired, they were keen for it to continue, so now they come to my house
once a fortnight.
SH
Where do you see the future?
PR
Get the training back
SH
What do you feel about the establishing of an Alumni Association?
PR
We tried it again and again but it never worked. America does a great deal
more with these things.
SH
What do you see as the function of the Alumni Association?
PR
Keeping the tradition alive and treating children. You cannot do a case
without supervision where you have come away and thought I have learned
something more. I still do BAP supervision.
SH
Sounds like you are still working a lot?
PR
I see some adolescents and have two supervisions from the BAP. One who
has just qualified and one is about to qualify.
SH
You are still very actively involved.
PR
Yes I am. And people ring me to ask me for advice.
SH
And what were you most proud of achieving at the Centre?
PR
Surviving
SH
During Wednesday meetings!
PR
Horrifyingly difficult.
SH
You have achieved so much during your time attached to the Centre. Is there one
thing that stands out?
PR
I can walk away as one of the most difficult supervisors!
SH
Did you have a difficult supervision yourself?
PR
I had Ruth Thomas, Agi Bene, and Mrs Bevan who died a long time ago.
I had Hansi Kennedy for my once weekly All challenging at the time which maybe
enabled you. I got awful cases. Ruth Thomas used to tell me when they had a
meeting to decide who was going to be allotted, she used to say that is a Pat Radford
case!
SH
When you were a supervisor, you were tough and tried to challenge? It sounds
like they were very lucky to have you.
SH
Finally, any abiding funny random memories of your time at the Centre that
provide a different perspective?
PR
I had a little boy who was all over the place, incredible. He came from the
nursery, so we got a lot of under 5s. My room was at the top of the house. He
would be off.II would be chasing after him down the stairs and corridors and then
one day there was Miss Freud coming up and she said to me ‘Hello,good morning,
Miss Radford, having a little trouble:? And then I tore off after this kid not knowing
what the heck he was going to do next.