Isabel Menzies-Lyth: Personal reflections

Abstract

This is a personal account of being supervised by Isabel Menzies-Lyth (1917–2008) when the author was beginning a career as a counsellor for people with multiple sclerosis, when counselling itself was finding its place in society in the early 1980s. Isabel Menzies-Lyth was a sociologist born in Scotland, the only woman amongst those who founded the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. An analyst, herself analysed by Wilfred Bion, she is best remembered for a paper she published in 1959: ‘A case-study in the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety. A report on a study of the nursing service of a general hospital’ . This paper describes the huge debt owed to her by her supervisee.

Keywords:

• Counselling
• Isabel Menzies Lyth
• disabilities
• suicide
• nurses
• supervision

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to her for all she taught me, both directly and indirectly; for her warmth and support and the inspiration which has sustained me throughout my working life. I am so glad her work lives on; and I know she would be too.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).