Robert (Bob) Gosling OBE

Bob Gosling, who died aged 79 years, was in his day one of the most influential psychiatrists in the country — being both a psychotherapist to many professional colleagues and their spouses, and an inspiration to generations of colleagues and students at the Tavistock Clinic.?

The Tavistock, founded in 1920, had always been a centre of excellence, albeit perceived as a somewhat eccentric one with its early emphasis on multidisciplinary partnership and on the importance of psychosocial factors. During the Second World War many of its staff served in uniform and were centrally involved in Army psychiatry, and in particular the War Office Selection Boards that still form the basis of Civil Service selection in the UK. Following the War many of the staff, including John Bowlby, Wilfred Bion and Jock Sutherland, among others, returned to the Tavistock and proceeded to run the place on somewhat military lines.

Bob Gosling was the first and foremost of the new generation of psychiatric staff that shaped the Clinic following the retirement of Jock Sutherland as chairman. His style was a much more facilitating and participatory one, and led to a flowering of creativity in the institution.

Gosling led the Tavistock Clinic from 1968-1979, and during this period crafted the strategic vision that has been implemented since then. His emphasis was determinedly on valuing the contributions of all members of staff and of all disciplines equally. In this he followed the ideals of the Clinic's founders, but at a time when medical supremacy was the norm. He went far beyond the training traditions of the day in believing and acting upon his views that psychiatrists had a great deal to learn from other mental health professionals.

Born in Birmingham, Gosling became a medical student there and obtained a BSc in physiology. He then gained a Rockefeller Scholarship to do his clinical training in the USA, at Cornell. After obtaining his MD at Cornell, and qualifying on his return to the UK, he worked as a locum general practitioner before starting his psychiatric training at the Maudsley Hospital as registrar to Professor Sir Aubrey Lewis.

He then became a senior registrar in the adult department of the Tavistock Clinic, acting for several years as assistant to the psychoanalyst Michael Balint, who was pioneering training for general practitioners. Gosling qualified as a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society in 1958, and became a consultant at the Tavistock Clinic.

Bob was much loved by his patients and colleagues for his warmth, tolerance and deep understanding of the vicissitudes of the human condition. He himself acknowledged that his own suffering and experience as a patient, of which he had more than his fair share, moulded his attitude to patients, colleagues and to life in general.

As a medical student in the USA he developed tuberculosis, from which he suffered for four years, much of which he spent flat on his back. He often spoke of how deeply impressed he was by the observation that whether his fellow patients got better or worse depended to a significant degree on their emotions — a finding that he not only applied to himself, but that moved him towards a career in psychoanalysis.

He was unfortunate to be given a ‘second dose’ of such learning when he developed poliomyelitis during his training as registrar at the Maudsley and spent 18 months off work, several weeks of which he spent in an iron lung. He later spoke of his state of mind of helpless dependency at this time, and of the importance of his relationships with staff looking after him, including the ward cleaner who seemed to be very energetic with her broom around the life-saving electric plug on which he was dependent!

These experiences, and his analysis with Wilfred Bion, also gave him a lifelong interest in group and institutional processes. He was very influential in the design of many training courses, both at the Tavistock and elsewhere, ensuring that they harnessed the innate group dynamics available for learning.

With colleagues such as Eric Miller, Gordon Lawrence, Pierre Turquet and others, he was strongly involved in the Leicester Group Relations Conferences that brought together professionals from fields as far apart as health, industry and government in order to study matters of leadership and authority in organisations, and significantly stretched the boundaries of understanding with his classic paper on very small groups. He was also centrally involved with the work of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and organised the enormously successful 1964 International Conference on Psychotherapy.

In late middle age his hearing failed, and he decided to take early retirement from the NHS. In recognition of his work he was awarded the OBE.

He and his wife, the novelist Veronica Henriques, retired to Gloucestershire. Together they restored a Queen Anne house, and he took up his hobbies of carpentry and part-time farming. He never lost his capacity to support friends and colleagues alike, and did so till his last few hours.

He is survived by his wife, four sons and a daughter.