John Rawlings Rees, (25 June 1890 – 11 April 1969), also known as 'Jack' or 'J.R.', was a British civilian and military psychiatrist.

Early life

Born in

Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...

to the Methodist minister Reverend Montgomery Rees and his wife Catharine Millar, John Rawlings Rees experienced frequent relocations during his early life as his father moved from

manse A manse () is a clergy house inhabited by, or formerly inhabited by, a minister, usually used in the context of Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and other Christian traditions. Ultimately derived from the Latin ''mansus'', "dwelling", from '' ...

to manse. After a period spent at Leeds, most of Rees education took place at

Bradford Grammar School Bradford Grammar School (BGS) is a co-educational independent day school located in Frizinghall, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Entrance is by examination, except for the sixth form, where admission is based on GCSE results. The school g ...

. He then attended

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

, where he studied Medicine and Natural Science and played water polo. Following his degree, Rees worked at the Victoria Park Chest Hospital, studying

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

. Rees was finishing his medical education at the

London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and Tower Hamlets and spe ...

when the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

broke out. He joined the Friends Ambulance Unit in 1914, and later became a Medical Officer in the

Royal Army Medical Corps The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace. The RAMC, the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, the Royal Army Dental Corps a ...

, where he was awarded the Belgian Knight of the Order of the Crown for his work with Belgian civilians. After being invalided back to London for a time, Rees was placed in charge of a motor ambulance unit in

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...

until 1919, when he demobilised with the rank of

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

Inter-War work at the Tavistock Clinic

Hugh Crichton-Miller Hugh Crichton-Miller (born in Genoa, Italy, 5 February 1877, died 1 January 1959 in London) was a Scottish physician and psychiatrist. He founded the Bowden House nursing home for nervous diseases at Harrow-on-the-Hill in 1912 and the Tavistock C ...

invited Rees to work with him at a private psychiatric nursing home, Bowden House, Harrow on the Hill. Rees married Mary Isobel Hemingway (10 September 1887 – 4 October 1954), the resident medical officer at Bowden House, in 1921. Their marriage occurred shortly after Rees and Crichton-Miller created the Tavistock Square Clinic for Functional Nervous Disorders, a voluntary hospital which opened in 1920. Mary also joined the staff of the Tavistock Clinic. The clinic specialised in the new 'dynamic psychologies' of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

and his followers, and in particular the

Object relations Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between e ...

theory of

Ronald Fairbairn William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn () FRSE (11 August 1889 – 31 December 1964) was a Scottish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and a central figure in the development of the Object Relations Theory of psychoanalysis. He usually used, and was known as ...

and others. As well as educating others at the clinic, Rees took the DPH in 1920 and MRCP in 1936. Rees was one of the key figures at the original

Tavistock Clinic The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kin ...

and became its medical director from 1933. He began to make plans to establish an Institute of Medical Psychology, with beds and more opportunities to train people in psychiatric methods, and bought a site in Bloomsbury to build it, but his plans were halted by the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Second World War

Rees was appointed consulting psychiatrist to the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

during the Second World War, and obtained the rank of

brigadier Brigadier is a military rank, the seniority of which depends on the country. In some countries, it is a senior rank above colonel, equivalent to a brigadier general or commodore, typically commanding a brigade of several thousand soldiers. In ...

. According to

Eric Trist Eric Lansdown Trist (11 September 1909 – 4 June 1993) was an English scientist and leading figure in the field of organizational development (OD). He was one of the founders of the Tavistock Institute for Social Research in London. Biography ...

, another key member of the original Tavistock group: During the war, Rees oversaw his colleagues' experiments with group psychotherapy, 'therapeutic communities', morale, rehabilitation, and selection tests.

Rudolf Hess affair

The work which occupied most of Rees time during the war was the case of

Rudolf Hess Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (Heß in German; 26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a German politician and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess held that position unt ...

. Together with Henry Dicks, a fellow member of the Tavistock Clinic group, Rees was charged with the care of Hitler's Deputy at the secret prison locations where he was held following his capture after landing in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. Over the four-year period from June 1941 to Hess' appearance at the

Nuremberg trial The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...

, Rees apparently established a relationship with Hess: Hess' diaries record many meetings with Rees, referred to at this time as Colonel Rees, in which Hess accused his captors of attempting to poison, drug, and '

mesmerise Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologic ...

' him. In 1945 Rees was a member of the three-man British panel (with Churchill's personal physician Lord Moran, and eminent neurologist Dr George Riddoch) which assessed Hess's capability to stand trial for war crimes.

End of the war and Operation Phoenix

As a result of his war work, Rees was appointed a

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

in 1946. He received awards including the Thomas Salmon Memorial lectureship of the

New York Academy of Medicine The New York Academy of Medicine (the Academy) is a health policy and advocacy organization founded in 1847 by a group of leading New York metropolitan area physicians as a voice for the medical profession in medical practice and public health ...

in 1944, the

William Withering William Withering FRS (17 March 1741 – 6 October 1799) was an English botanist, geologist, chemist, physician and first systematic investigator of the bioactivity of digitalis. Withering was born in Wellington, Shropshire, the son of a surg ...

lectureship at the

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

in 1945, and shared the first new

Lasker Award The Lasker Awards have been awarded annually since 1945 to living persons who have made major contributions to medical science or who have performed public service on behalf of medicine. They are administered by the Lasker Foundation, which was f ...

with

Brock Chisholm George Brock Chisholm (18 May 1896 – 4 February 1971) was a Canadian psychiatrist, medical practitioner, World War I veteran, and the first director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO). He was the 13th Canadian Surgeon General and t ...

in 1945. After the war, the

underwent considerable changes, in which Rees played a key role. He was a member of a group who referred to themselves as the ‘invisible college’, in reference to the 17th century precursor to the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

. This group orchestrated "Operation Phoenix", making plans for Tavistock to rise from the ashes of war. After the war, this group, including Rees and five others, formed the Interim Planning Committee of the Tavistock Clinic. This committee was chaired by

Wilfred Bion Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO (; 8 September 1897 – 8 November 1979) was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965. Early life and military service Bion was born in Ma ...

, meeting twice a week to formulate a new way forward for their work at Tavistock, based on war-time experience. Rees’ plans for the Institute of Medical Psychology were never realised; instead, the group went on to found the

Tavistock Institute The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a British not-for-profit organisation that applies social science to contemporary issues and problems. It was initiated in 1946, when it developed from the Tavistock Clinic, and was formally establ ...

, with funding from the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

. Rees left shortly afterwards in 1947.

President of World Federation for Mental Health

After leaving the Tavistock, Rees’ first role was as the chief organiser of the 1948 International Congress for Mental Health, held in London. At this congress, the

World Federation for Mental Health The World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) is an international, multi-professional non-governmental organization (NGO), including citizen volunteers and former patients. It was founded in 1948 in the same era as the United Nations (UN) and the W ...

was founded, and Rees was elected as the first president. This organisation is now a non-governmental organisation with formal consultative status at the United Nations.World Federation for Mental Health
There is an annual Rees lecture in memory of Rees' wife, Mary Hemingway Rees, "among the first staff members at the Tavistock Clinic when it was founded in 1920" and "one of the founders of the WFMH" with her husband.Newsletter 2005
/ref> Rees retired from his post in 1962, though he continued to act as a consultant. He died at his London home on 11 April 1969.

Footnotes

Selected bibliography

* ''The Social Engagement of Social Science: a Tavistock Anthology Vol 1'' (1990), E. L. Trist,

Free Association Books Free Association Books is a project started in London in the 1980s. Bob Young and colleagues began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation. Other people became involved in the movement such as Andrew Samuels and B ...

, * ''Fifty Years of the Tavistock Clinic'', Henry V Dicks (1970), Routledge,
''The Shaping of Psychiatry by War''
(New York: Norton, 1945) * ''The Case of Rudolf Hess; A Problem in diagnosis and forensic psychiatry'' (1948), by John R. Rees, Henry Victor Dicks * ''Hess, the Missing Years'', 1987, by David Irving, Macmillan Press (many references indexed to Rees) . *

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rees, John Rawlings 1890 births 1969 deaths People from Leicester People educated at Bradford Grammar School British psychiatrists Military psychiatrists Royal Army Medical Corps officers People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit British Army personnel of World War I Military personnel from Leicester British Army brigadiers of World War II