Psychiatric Penguins

Abstract

The British mass-market publisher Penguin produced a number of texts on psychiatric topics in the period c. 1950-c.1980. Investigation of editorial files relating to a sample of these volumes reveals that they were shaped as much by the commercial imperatives and changing aspirations of the publisher as by developments and debates in psychiatry itself. A number of economic imperatives influenced the publishing process, including: the perennial difficulty in finding psychiatrists willing and able to enter the popular book market; the economic pressures exerted on peer-review protocols; and the identification of a niche market in popular psychiatry, latterly of a politically radical flavour. As well as offering a materialist standpoint for the study of popular psychiatric texts, this investigation allows an opportunity to adapt, apply, and assess theoretical approaches to mass-market publishing by psychiatrists.The British publisher Penguin is a household name in the UK. From its inception in 1935 to the present day, it has held a prominent place in the British book trade. As well as publishing literary works, Penguin has also produced many educative and scholarly volumes for the mass market, particularly through its Pelican imprint.

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

“…As Adrian Laing indicates, Laing’s pursuit of celebrity distracted him from rigorous intellectual activity: ‘Ronnie’s “stuff” was brilliant and exciting the first time round; listening to his views more than once made them seem platitudinous, bordering on the self-indulgent’ (Laing, 2006: 109). A similar pattern has been described previously, whereby Laing’s marketability for the UK publisher Penguin encouraged them to turn a blind eye to the potential shortcomings of his written output (Miller, 2015: 86–91). By 1977, Laing’s diminishing psychiatric significance meant that he ‘wished to be regarded more as a poet’ (Laing, 2006: 191), but he was unable to fulfil this literary ambition, producing poorly reviewed bottom-drawer efforts such as Do You Love Me?…”

“…Stafford-Clark’s mass-media career, the focus of this article, flourished in the 1950s as the medical profession began to find a more collaborative relationship with broadcasters and mass-market publishers (see below). His career as a mass-market author began in 1952 with his Penguin popular introduction, Psychiatry To-day (Stafford-Clark, 1952), which eventually sold over 100,000 copies, and remained in print until the early 1970s (Miller, 2015: 81). Stafford-Clark’s broadcasting career began soon thereafter, in 1953, with radio work for the BBC.…”

“…In his desire to be well-known for something other than his well-knowness, Stafford-Clark maintained a lifelong conviction that he was ultimately to be recognized as ‘an unrecognized literary author of substantial merit’ (Miller, 2015: 81). Stafford-Clark’s belief in his prodigious talent seems to have crystallized when he received in 1933 ‘the Gate Prize for poetry’, given ‘annually to “the best poem published in a school magazine”’ (Stafford-Clark, 1987: 218).…”

“…Stafford-Clark’s belief in his prodigious talent seems to have crystallized when he received in 1933 ‘the Gate Prize for poetry’, given ‘annually to “the best poem published in a school magazine”’ (Stafford-Clark, 1987: 218). However, the response to Stafford-Clark’s volumes of wartime poetry, Autumn Shadow (1941) and Sound in the Sky (1944) was lukewarm: Stafford-Clark’s poetry was ‘proudly committed to patriotic, political and spiritual statements in a time of national crisis’ (Miller, 2015: 82), but lacked poetic technique. When in 1944 Stafford-Clark sends his work to Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), the distinguished poet and novelist of World War One, the latter explains ‘many of your passages are blank verse, with lines occurring which don’t scan at all unless one ignores your line endings – and then there are loose bits left over.…”

“…From 1957–1962, Stafford-Clark presented almost 60 episodes of the BBC TV programme Lifeline , at a time when audience figures for the UK’s two TV channels (BBC and ITV) could easily run into millions. Laing’s trajectory as a celebrity – his widely discussed rise and fall in public consciousness, his diminishing intellectual credibility, and his failure as a creative (rather than discursive) writer – therefore invites questions that can be answered by a detailed analysis of his precursor, Stafford-Clark, who is, unlike Laing, generally forgotten, and academically neglected (excluding Miller, 2015: 79–83; Wells, 1995: 64, 190–191; Long, 2014: 37–38; Jones, 2006: passim). Laing’s first British TV appearances in 1963–1964 (Laing, 2006: 81–84) occurred just as Stafford-Clark was being sidelined by the BBC, the British state-funded broadcaster that had propelled him onto the national stage and into the homes of viewers and listeners.…”