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Following on from the @BBCRadio4 thread yesterday remembering the life and achievements of Dr Anthony Clare, I wanted to offer my own thread on notable British psychiatrists called Anthony. We'll start with Anthony Stevens. Born in 1933, Stevens is a prolific author and Jungian
scholar, an analyst and psychiatrist who studied for a time under John Bowlby (coincidentally, Bowlby's own father was called Anothony.) He holds degrees in medicine and psychology from Oxford and has lectured widely in London Zurich and the US on Jung and psychotherapy and is a
member of @rcpsych. Steven's most famous work is Archetype: A Natural History of The Self, praised by Dr Anthony Storr (who we will come to next) in the @TheTLS as 'one of the best introductions to (Jung's) thought and its practical applications.' You can hear Stevens lecture on
'The Archetypal Realities of Everyday Life', recorded in 1986, here https://jungchicago.org/blog/the-archetypal-realities-of-everyday-life/ He begins with the tantalising introduction 'archetypes are not esoteric things at all, they are with us every moment of our lives.' Steven's book on dreaming,
'Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming', is also endorsed by Anthony Storr. Our second Anthony, Anthony Storr (1920 – 2001) was a London born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. A literary man, music lover and broadcaster, Storr briefly worked at the Maudsley hospital (1947-50),
under Professor Sir Aubrey Lewis. He was a member of the (Jungian) Society for Analytical Psychology and maintained he would rather have been a musician if he had had the talent. Here he is on a wonderful edition of Desert Island discs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0093x6d. One of Storr's
later books, 'Solitude a Return to the Self' is especially relevant now for anyone looking for a rich, compassionate and insightful lockdown read. Anthony Clare (our third Anthony) called 'Solitude' a 'richly satisfying and stimulating work' and it is one of my favourites.
Storr's collection of essays, 'Churchill's Black Dog and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind' published in 1989 was also endorsed by Anthony Clare as 'Hugely readable and thoughtful.' Our third Anthony, Anthony Clare (1942 – 2007) was one of the UK's most famous psychiatrists.
Clare was a master interviewer and host of 'In The Psychiatrist's Chair', one of the all-time great radio series on @BBCRadio4. His guests included @stephenfry, RD Laing, Sir Peter Hall, Maya Angelou and Spike Milligan. Following his interview, Clare would later go on to
co-author a book about Depression with Milligan called, 'Depression and How to Survive It.' All 29 episodes of this iconic radio series are available on @BBCSounds and, frankly, there are few better ways to pass a rainy afternoon than listening to these:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039dks7/episodes/player.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039dks7/episodes/player.
'Psychiatrist in the Chair - the official biography of Prof Anthony Clare' by @muirishouston and Brendan Kelly (published by @MerrionPress) came out earlier this week. The dust jacket endorsement for this book is by Joanna Lumley, interviewed by Clare and nominated for a
Tony Award in 2011. It is from this Tony award nomination that we will awkwardly segue to our last (fourth) Anthony of this thread, cognitive neuropsychiatrist and Director of @UCLMentalHealth Anthony David ( @ProfTonyDavid.) His recent book, out earlier this year
'Into the Abyss: A Neuropsychiatrist's Notes on Troubled Minds' also has a rather good unabridged Audible version: https://oneworld-publications.com/into-the-abyss.html. If you know of any other notable British psychiatrists called Anthony, please feel free to add them here.
