Remembrance: The Maudsley in the Second World War

During the Second World War the Maudsley, concerned about the possibility of being caught up in the air raids engulfing central London, split into two. Part of the Hospital’s staff and patients moved south to Sutton, and the other half moved to the Mill Hill area. Although the Hospital was meant to continue to provide acute in and outpatient psychological treatment, and academic study into causes and treatment of mental health issues, the split had a number of unintended side effects. The Mill Hill Hospital , which was under the supervision of Dr Walter Maclay, favoured psychotherapies like exercise, occupational therapy (seen here in the carpentry workshop) and talking therapies, whereas the Sutton Emergency Hospital, where William Sargant was the dominant clinical voice, became more interested in physical treatments, including the relatively new Electro-Convulsive Therapy. When they united again in 1946 this led to a struggle over which avenue to pursue, which was only resolved when Aubrey Lewis, of Mill Hill, emerged as the dominant practitioner at the Maudsley. 

One doctor who had a very different experience of the War was Eric Guttmann. Eric was a German-Jewish doctor whose position at the Maudsley was created with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation- essentially it was a way of rescuing him (and a couple of contemporaries) from the increasingly dangerous environment of racial hatred in Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, this experience and six years of service at the Maudsley counted for nothing when Britain declared war on Germany, and Eric was interred in Huyton, a camp for ‘enemy nationals’ near Liverpool. He eventually made his way further south, working first in Oxford and then rejoining his colleagues at Mill Hill. His son has shared his letters to his future wife (Elizabeth Rosenberg, herself a psychologist at the Maudsley) during this time with the Museum, and is writing  a biography of his war years.