The practice was set up in 1981 by Margaret Farrell, who bought no 26 Newnham Road, an end terrace next to the Malting House. Margaret had been an educational psychologist at Brookside, the NHS clinic at the time for families and children. Originally Margaret had come from California where she had studied International Politics, later wanting to pursue her desire to become a child analyst, and having been told by Anna Freud to study for a degree in psychology, She later read psychology at Cambridge. 

One of the appeals of 26, Newnham Road, apart from its position opposite the Mill Pond, and its charm as a building of historical interest was that it was located next to Susan Isaac’s wartime nurseries in the Malting House. Susan Isaacs was a Kleinian analyst who established a progressive school…

 

Margaret trained at the Guild of Psychotherapists, which had been formed in the early 1970’s by amongst others Dr Peter Lomas who  had established himself as a psychoanalyst and existential psychotherapist in the 1970’s.

Bit about Peter Lomas and anti psychiatry…

 

Margaret was married to Dr David Clark, at the time superintendent of Fulbourn, which he had transformed into a therapeutic community, challenging the stigma of mental illness and instituting a regime of humane treatment much of which took the form of group work.

 

When the CPT was formed in Cambridge, psychoanalysis was embraced by academics, by the University Counselling Service and to an extent by various doctors working in psychiatry and GP practice. At the time there were only two psychoanalysts working in Cambridge, Kenneth Lambert, a prominent Jungian and Peter Lomas, following the untimely and tragic death of Dr Bernard Zeitlyn and the retirement of the child analyst Marie Singer;  there was space for the development of analytic psychotherapy in Cambridge which led to the establishment of the Cambridge Psychotherapy Practice.

These were exciting times in the growth of psychotherapy.

 

Margaret formed the practice which at first consisted of Dr Roger Bacon,a psychotherapist, previously a sociologist, Dr Nicky Blandford,a psychiatrist, later a Jungian analyst Siân Morgan, a psychotherapist who had worked with post natally depressed mothers,Bill Lintott, a group analyst, and later Michael Miller who worked in Fulbourn with David Clark and Dr Marina Voukansksya, who had been a Russian dissident psychiatrist who had also worked in Fulbourn and later trained to be a psychotherapist.