© 2004 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
© 2004 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Obituaries |
A perspective from clinical psychology
I was fortunate in being the first lecturer in clinical psychology to be appointed personally by Professor Neil Kessel, shortly after his appointment, and being in his department during the entirety of his career. Thus, it was possible to follow the evolution and attainments of his Chair.
His flair for administration made it possible for new services to commence and actually thrive. Neil had, from the outset, a wide knowledge of clinical psychology, being first impressed by Graham Foulds, who reflected his own concerns for the needs of the individual patient. He had extensive knowledge of behavioural therapy and neuropsychology. This resulted in fruitful ties with the departments of medicine and neurology at the Royal Infirmary, Manchester, prefiguring what we now know as liaison psychiatry and health psychology.
Neil avoided charisma and preferred a forthright dialectic manner. As a result he generated interest in the acquisition of knowledge and detailed preparation of case histories, presented at the Friday morning case conference, rather than the previous emphasis on phenomenology. The new focus was on techniques of rehabilitation involving an expansion of clinical psychology, as well as psychiatry. The new department at Withington grew to contain more rehabilitation on one site for serious mental illness and alcoholism that one could possibly envisage today.
It could be regarded as a brief golden age of high-level teaching and care for the individual.
The University Unit of Clinical Psychology commenced in 1974, reaping the rewards of early outline plans devised by Neil and his colleagues, years before. He was, to quote the epitaph of Purcell the composer, "A marvelous man, a very marvelous man". We owe to him our education, or clarity of thought, even-handedness with others, some of whom were, in an unselfish way, aided into careers eventually outside of psychology or psychiatry.
Finally the time in the last century when equal rights were hardly heard of, it can be said that Neil made it possible for many women in psychology and psychiatry to pursue effective part-time careers.
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