Citation on the occasion of Israel Kolvin receiving an honorary doctorate
26th January 2002
Vice-Chancellor, Dean, Graduands, Faculty, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have pleasure in presenting to you for an honorary doctorate in education, Israel Kolvin, Bowlby Emeritus Professor of Child and Family Mental Health at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, University College, London and the Tavistock Centre.
If I were to tell you all Professor Kolvin’s personal, academic and professional achievements we would be here till tomorrow, so I want to concentrate on his achievements in the educational sphere as befits the honour about to be conferred on him, but also to say a little about his personal virtues.
Professor Kolvin is one of the small band of child and adolescent psychiatrists in his generation who have made a substantial contribution to the mental health of children. He has done this by his research work which has enhanced our understanding of the nature, causes and effective treatment of the psychological problems of children and young people. He has taught generations of undergraduates at the University of Newcastle medical school and at the Royal Free Hospital school of medicine, and has taught and supervised countless post-graduate students. Through his published work, (nearly 200 peer-reviewed papers, 5 major books and over one hundred book chapters), and international visiting professorships and lecturers, he has reached many more.
Born in South Africa, the youngest of five children, his father died when he was 6 and there was too little money for him to finish his education. He took various jobs whilst gaining his first degree in psychology and philosophy before he was able to return full-time to medical studies, supported (as he has been throughout his life) by Rona, his wife. They left South Africa in 1958, so Issy could pursue his post-graduate studies in psychiatry in this country. He trained as a psychiatrist in Newcastle and was appointed to a personal chair there in 1977. His research output has been prodigious from the earliest days – he produced 10 papers in his two years in Oxford, for instance demonstrating clearly the difference between autism and schizophrenia. He built up an outstanding team of clinicians and researchers in Newcastle, and inspired them to heights of creative productivity. Their influence is to be found all over the UK and further afield.
His evaluation of school-based psychotherapy published as a book, “Help Starts Here” bridged the until-then seemingly unbridgeable gulf between psychotherapy and academic research and was instrumental in enabling Dr Trowell, then chairman of the children’s department of the Tavistock Clinic, and myself, then head of the child psychiatry department of the Royal Free Hospital to persuade the Tavi that Issy was the right person (in fact the only person) able to fill the newly-created Bowlby Chair and Child and Family Mental Health of the University of London, based in our two institutions. Fortunately, Issy was persuadable too! So in 1990 he moved south. He took on a hard task. He had almost no resources, little space and no staff. Child psychiatry was a Cinderella specialty within the Royal Free Medical School, and the Tavistock Clinic was wary of someone not schooled in psychoanalytic thinking.
Professor Kolvin transformed both institutions in a relatively short space of time. He only had 4 years to go before he reached the usual retiring age. By the time he ‘retired’ he had built the Tavistock into a serious and prolific research institute, whilst respecting their important and unique clinical work, and had influenced a major charity to contribute funds for housing the academic department at the Royal Free Hospital and for providing medical and non-medical academic posts to support the Chair which by that time, his successor would occupy. I say ‘retired’ in inverted commas, because Issy has continued in his emeritus role in the 7 years since then, working full-time and continuing to preside over huge research teams, though in the last years he has struggled with major ill-health which has meant long periods in hospital. Even in hospital he continues to work – completing no less than 14 papers in the last few months, including the results of a study with the late Dr Glasser of the Portman Clinic published last month in the British Journal of Psychiatry showing the high incidence of sexual abuse experienced in the childhoods of adult sexual abusers.
He has carried out research on the evaluation of mental health service provision for children, the transmission of deprivation and disadvantage, depression in adolescents, sexual abuse of children, hyperactivity, elective mutism, enuresis, psychosis in childhood, child development and childhood epilepsy to name but a few subjects in which he has been involved.
Academics in the field of medicine have not only to carry out research, teach undergraduates and post-graduates, publish prolifically, give papers at conferences, nationally and internationally, and contribute to the smooth running of their department and university etc as all academic do, they have also to be clinicians – seeing and treating patients, supervising junior staff, and contributing to the smooth running of their hospital or clinic and their professional bodies. To do all this successfully, they have to be nearly superhuman, needing little sleep, and enjoying few of the family and leisure activities that mere mortals consider essential to their physical and mental health. I can tell you that Issy has managed to be a devoted husband, father and grandfather, a wonderful friend, and a dab hand at bowls. He also devours several detective novels a month and finds time to go to the ballet and theatre. He has achieved all that I have told you about today and much more (I have not mentioned his major contributions to the running of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, his Chairmanship of several professional bodies and committees, his editorial work, his work for governments here and abroad and WHO, the prizes, honours and medals he has been awarded), he has achieved all this through ability and hard work of course, but also because he has a rare talent – he is able to bring the best out of all who come in contact with him – he is able to stimulate and inspire so he can collaborate with colleagues from many disciplines, and by doing so to enable an at least doubling of production! He has the rare ability to enhance self-esteem in others, and to enable those who work with him to discover resources and abilities within themselves which they did not know they had. He is immensely kind yet will not let those who work with him get away with sloppy work. His standards are of the highest. For his outstanding contribution to education, Vice Chancellor, I invite you to confer on Emeritus Professor Israel Kolvin an honorary doctorate in education.
Dr Dora Black, MB., BCh., FRCPsych, FRCPCH, DPM
Honorary Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Traumatic Stress Clinic,
Gt Ormond St Hospital for Children, and Royal Free Hospital.