“How to Cure Family Disturbance”: Enid Balint and the Creation of Couple Psychoanalysis – Twenty-first Enid Balint Memorial Lecture 2016

In 1946, Enid Eichholz (the future Enid Balint) established the very first psychotherapeutic service for the treatment of marital distress in Great Britain. Assisted by supportive colleagues from the Tavistock Clinic and the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, Mrs Eichholz's Family Discussion Bureaux soon became incorporated into the Tavistock family, and ultimately developed into the organisation now known as Tavistock Relationships, part of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. In this essay, based extensively on unpublished archival sources, the author traces the history of the couple psychoanalytic movement in Great Britain, exploring the ways in which Enid Eichholz Balint forged important collaborative partnerships, set against the backdrop of a progressive post-World War social democratic government, in order to create a new paradigm in mental health provision.