J. Stuart Whiteley – an appreciation

Citation

Lees, G.F.a.J. (2013), "J. Stuart Whiteley – an appreciation", Therapeutic Communities: The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Vol. 34 No. 2/3. https://doi.org/10.1108/TC-06-2013-0016

J. Stuart Whiteley – an appreciation

Article Type: Obituary From: Therapeutic Communities: The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Volume 34, Issue 2/3.

When you met Stuart Whiteley, you met the man first, not the therapeutic community expert, or the expert on psychopathy, or the doctor or psychiatrist, although he was all of these. Stuart was a man who inspired enormous affection, loyalty, respect and gratitude. At his funeral, Neil Small talked of Stuart's warmth, his commitment to his colleagues and his calm decency. Stuart could be shy, quiet, diffident, self-effacing, even sometimes unconfident, but he also had strength, stability, firmness and a quiet authority – Rex Haigh described him as a rock (personal communication). Stuart was also extraordinarily ordinary, and down-to-earth, with a penchant for debunking – he burst many a narcissistic and grandiose bubble for others – but could also be very facilitating and encouraging. He assumed that people could change, or carry out tasks, and quietly expected you to get on with them and do them, and had little truck with neurotic anxieties and excuses.

He was inordinately proud of residents and staff who had been through the Henderson Hospital Therapeutic Community. He often described the Henderson as a sort of college or finishing school, and maintained that any ex-Hendersonians who met anywhere in the world would have an instant rapport and get on – this is mostly true! He would often describe ex-members with affection in his talks and lectures – he was particularly fond of an ex-resident who changed his name to Jake Zed Mangle-Wurzel, an eccentric who often appeared in his local paper or on local television. Jake sent Stuart clippings about all of this, which Stuart kept and proudly showed to anyone who was interested, and Stuart talked about Jake in the 18th Foulkes lecture he gave (Whiteley, 1994). Other residents went on to take up professional or academic careers, while many staff went on to become professors or other academics, senior health service managers, researchers, group analysts and psychotherapists, and probably all would attribute the start of their careers to the emotional and practical support given to them personally by Stuart during their time at Henderson.

Stuart came to the Henderson as Medical Director in 1966 and stayed there until his retirement in 1988 – his retirement do was held on a large boat on the Thames in Central London! Before that, he had done his medical training near his childhood home in Leeds – although he never wanted to go back! He then went to the Maudsley, Warlingham Park and Westminster Hospitals, before joining the Henderson. He found his metier here with the therapeutic community model. Although a medic, Stuart was committed to more social explanations of behaviour and symptomatology. He was often heard at lectures and talks given by more organically biased experts on psychopathy asking them to “show me the pill for personality disorder”! Stuart's forte was sociotherapy and social learning. He was at his best in community meetings, of which he must have attended over 5,000 during his stay at Henderson. Although Stuart was very good at working with the presenting past, he didn’t have much truck with high-faluting and convoluted psychodynamic interpretations – he preferred the direct, no-nonsense approach. He would listen to residents give long, complex rationalisations of their behaviour, and then respond by saying, “No, no, no – you are just behaving badly and you need to stop it”. Stuart recognised the importance of modelling and being alongside patients, and exemplified this in practice – whether with his head down the toilet with a toilet brush, cleaning it, as it was his (New Residents) group's turn to clean the loos, or working alongside men in the carpentry workshop – before Health and Safety put a stop to such dangerous activities!

Stuart was a founding member of ATC in 1972, and co-founder of the ATC Windsor Conference in 1978, which he wanted to be a professional and comfortable retreat for therapeutic community staff, where they could talk freely about their work, and get support from colleagues working in the same field. He was a sometime Chair of the Association of Therapeutic Communities, President of the Group Analytic Society, Executive Editor of the Journal of Group Analysis, Board member and Secretary of the International Association of Group Psychiatry, and Local Organising Committee Chair for the 1999 IAGP Congress in London. Stuart also developed an international reputation as an author and researcher on the therapeutic community, group approaches in psychiatry, and the understanding and treatment of psychopaths, sociopaths and now personality disorders. He wrote extensively – books, chapters, articles and lectures, and with clarity and accessibility. His book with John Gordon on Group Approaches in Psychiatry Whiteley and Gordon (1979) remains one of the best overviews of the field. Stuart also re-established the research tradition at Henderson Hospital by creating a full-time research post which has been held by many people over the years and has produced many valuable papers.

However, Stuart had other talents and interests outside of the therapeutic community. He was very committed to the locale where he lived, and loved his house, growing vegetables, and keeping chickens and quails – proudly offering his quails’ eggs as starters at dinner parties! He loved owning greyhounds and going to greyhound race meetings – his last greyhound attended Stuart's funeral; he loved fishing; and he loved jazz, frequenting jazz clubs and playing the saxophone. He wrote and published stories about racing driving; he took holidays as a ship's doctor, and wrote a column about his experiences on a women's magazine, under the name of Dr John Stuart. His second wife Christine was his rock – she was always immaculately smart and could look fierce, but this belied her warmth and tolerance. She respected Stuart's passion for his work, although sometimes found it a bit all consuming – she was known to introduce herself to people as “Mrs Henderson”! Stuart was devastated by her death, and never quite recovered. Luisa Brunori talks of him after Christine's death as having “a kind of gentle sadness” and as “having disappeared a bit” (personal communication).

There is a tendency when people die to idealise them – we would not wish to do this to Stuart, and he would have hated it! Stuart could be anxious and impatient – he could also be irritable and sometimes bad-tempered. He could appear very dour, even depressive, with a world-weary cynicism. He was obsessional about time keeping and often arrived 30 minutes early for events. He could also be very obstinate and immovable. However, he was a much loved man, and is much missed by many people.

Graeme Farquharson and Jan Lees

Postscript

If you would like to hear Stuart talking about his start at the Henderson, there are podcasts on the PETT website – www.tc-of.org.uk/radiotc/images/dot.butt.gif

References

Whiteley, J.S. (1994), “Attachment, loss and the space between: personality disorder in the therapeutic community”, Group Analysis, Vol. 27, pp. 359-83
Whiteley, J.S. and Gordon, J. (1979), Group Approaches in Psychiatry, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London