John Rawlings Rees
John Rawlings Rees FRCP | |
---|---|
Born | Leicester, England | 25 June 1890
Died | 11 April 1969 London, England | (aged 78)
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | Director of the Tavistock clinic President of the World Federation for Mental Health |
Notable work | Health of the Mind The Shaping of Psychiatry by War Modern Practice in Psychological Medicine |
Spouse | Mary Isobel Hemingway (m. 1920) |
John Rawlings Rees,
Early life
Born in Leicester to the Methodist minister Reverend Montgomery Rees and his wife Catharine Millar, John Rawlings Rees experienced frequent relocations during his early life as his father moved from manse to manse.[1] After a period spent at Leeds, most of Rees education took place at Bradford Grammar School. He then attended King's College, Cambridge, where he studied Medicine and Natural Science and played water polo.[2]
Following his degree, Rees worked at the
Inter-War work at the Tavistock Clinic
Second World War
Rees was appointed consulting psychiatrist to the British Army during the Second World War, and obtained the rank of brigadier. According to Eric Trist, another key member of the original Tavistock group:
In 1941 a group of psychiatrists at the Tavistock Clinic saw that the right questions were asked in Parliament to secure the means to try new measures. As a result they were asked to join the Directorate of Army Psychiatry, and did so as a group.[3]
During the war, Rees oversaw his colleagues' experiments with group psychotherapy, 'therapeutic communities', morale, rehabilitation, and selection tests.[1][4]
Rudolf Hess affair
The work which occupied most of Rees time during the war was the case of
End of the war and Operation Phoenix
As a result of his war work, Rees was appointed a
After the war, the
President of World Federation for Mental Health
After leaving the Tavistock, Rees’ first role was as the chief organiser of the 1948 International Congress for Mental Health, held in London. At this congress, the World Federation for Mental Health was founded, and Rees was elected as the first president. This organisation is now a non-governmental organisation with formal consultative status at the United Nations.[9] There is an annual Rees lecture in memory of Rees' wife, Mary Hemingway Rees, "among the first staff members at the Tavistock Clinic when it was founded in 1920" and "one of the founders of the WFMH" with her husband.[10]
Rees retired from his post in 1962, though he continued to act as a consultant. He died at his London home on 11 April 1969.
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d Dicks, Henry V. "John Rawlings Rees". Archived from the original on 22 October 2015. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
- ^ JSTOR 20396889.
- ^ a b Eric Trist and Hugh Murray, The Foundation and Development of the Tavistock Institute to 1989, Tavistock Institute
- ^ JSTOR 20364732.
- ^ Daniel Pick, The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts, 2012
- ^ Irving, Hess, the missing years
- ^ Pick, p.158. Although the trial proceedings Archived 25 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine refer to a T Rees, they also refer to "the English psychiatrist, Doctor Rees, who had Hess under observation from the first days of his flight to England". It seems certain that this English psychiatrist was John Rawlings Rees, though a T Rees may also have been present at the Nuremberg trials.
- ^ Dicks, Henry V. (1970). Fifty years of the Tavistock Clinic. London: Routledge & K. Paul. p. 107.
- ^ World Federation for Mental Health Archived 24 October 2005 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Newsletter 2005
Selected bibliography
- The Social Engagement of Social Science: a Tavistock Anthology Vol 1 (1990), ISBN 0-8122-8192-6
- Fifty Years of the Tavistock Clinic, Henry V Dicks (1970), Routledge, ISBN 0-7100-6846-8
- The Shaping of Psychiatry by War (New York: Norton, 1945)
- The Case of Rudolf Hess; A Problem in diagnosis and forensic psychiatry (1948), by John R. Rees, Henry Victor Dicks
- Hess, the Missing Years, 1987, by David Irving, Macmillan Press (many references indexed to Rees) ISBN 0-333-45179-1.
- Rees, Colonel J. R. (October 1940). "Strategic Planning for Mental Health". Ment Health (Lond). 1 (4): 103–106. PMID 28908962.