David Stafford-Clark (1916-1999): Seeing through a celebrity psychiatrist

Abstract

This article uses the mass-media career of the British psychiatrist David Stafford-Clark (1916-1999) as a case study in the exercise of cultural authority by celebrity medical professionals in post-war Britain. Stafford-Clark rose to prominence in the mass media, particularly through his presenting work on medical and related topics for BBC TV and Radio, and was in the vanguard of psychiatrists and physicians who eroded professional edicts on anonymity. At the height of his career, he traded upon his celebrity status, and consequent cultural authority, to deliver mass media sermons on a variety of social, cultural, and political topics. Stafford-Clark tried to preserve his sense of personal and intellectual integrity by clinging to a belief that his authority in the public sphere was ultimately to be vindicated by his literary, intellectual, and spiritual significance. But as his credibility dwindled, he came to distrust the cultural intermediaries, such as broadcasters and publishers, who had supported him.

Beyond a literacy model for psychiatry in the mass media

“…His moralising pronouncements eventually provoked a BBC editor to declare in exasperation, 'who the devil is this dealer with sick people, to pontificate like this about the whole of human life?'. 6 Stafford-Clark's career gives us a glimpse of the personal needs that media work can satisfy. In his case, they included literary ambition and a desire to offer spiritual and moral leadership in a secularising era.…”

From In Two Minds to MIND: The circulation of ‘anti-psychiatry’ in British film and television during the long 1960s

“…The article also gave voice to the ‘orthodox’ opinion of psychology professor Hans Eysenck, working within the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, who castigated ‘people like Laing and Cooper’ as ‘anarchists’ who ‘do not back up their views with any scientific evidence’ (Hornsby, 1967). While Laing was becoming a familiar figure within educated and countercultural circles (Miller, 2015), both the Express and Mail articles used the play as a way to introduce his ‘rebel’ ideas to their readership; the other reviews made no reference to Laing or his contemporaries by name. This reception challenges the oft-made but exaggerated claim that ‘R.D.…”

“… 3. As Gavin Miller (2015) highlights, during this period increasing public interest in Laing's ideas prompted popular presses like Penguin to publish and reissue his and his contemporaries’ work, thus increasing public awareness of the ideas that were later designated as ‘anti-psychiatry’.…”

The book history of Rona M. Fields's A Society on the Run (1973): A case study in the alleged suppression of psychological research on Northern Ireland

“…While history of the psychological disciplines habitually employs archival investigation of unpublished clinical and personal papers, there has been surprisingly little use of book history as a methodology, especially in comparison to the research base in broadcasting history (e.g., Long, 2014; Miller, 2017; Snelson, 2021) and academic publishing (e.g., Harris, 2020). Book history, though, has a particular and valuable role to play.…”