Speech by Professor Israel Kolvin upon receiving Honorary Doctorate
Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust and University of East London
26th January 2002
I am an old bird, and in the late 1980s my dear friend and colleague Dora Black set out to dislodge me from my chilly northern perch. Although I ruled the roost there, and was thriving in my habitat, she beguiled me with tales of the red hot intellectual climate prevailing here in the south, of the bright and colourful birds of a feather flocking together, and of the rich feeding grounds where with one swoop you could emerge with fat research funds wriggling in your beak.
My friends in Newcastle were not convinced. Issy, they said. Have you heard the one about the man rushing down the street. A passerby said, “take it easy, you’ll give yourself a hernia.” He answered: “You don’t know my therapist – if I’m late he’ll start without me.”
I certainly felt that the august therapists at the Tavistock Centre had s tarted without me, xxx years before I got there to be precise. I wondered in which other-worldly dimension this particular marriage had been made. While I saw myself as a student of human behaviour, I knew that they had had a debate about appointing a humble number cruncher. I imagined them thinking: “surely it would be easier to pop out to WH Smith and buy a calculator?” And when I got there, not only was I daunted by the hallowed portals of the foremost psychotherapy centre in Europe, but then I found out that we spoke entirely different languages. The crew of the Star Ship Enterprise had a universal translator – we had sign language and quizzical glances for communication.
But, here were brilliant theoreticians and able clinicians. It rapidly became a delight to join forces with them, to swap ideas, to stimulate each other to new areas of research, and to act as colleagues, confidants and collaborators. I can honestly say that the last decade has been one of the happiest and most productive of my life.
What makes a person is something beyond the ken even of therapists. I suspect that far beyond their reach is the hand of God who deals our cards. To David Beckham, he gave good looks and a blessed right foot. To Britney Spears the voice of an angel. The me, he amused himself by giving me a love of epidemiology, deprivation studies and outcome research, and the associated themes in which I have immersed myself for 50 years.
So great has my love for my work been, that to be honoured for it too seems an embarrassment of riches. It’s like winning an award for being lucky. I am deeply grateful both to the Tavistock and the University of East London for awarding this honour to one of its newer recruits. I take this doctorate as an accolade for the two institutions in which I have spent the majority of my working life – the Nuffield in Newcastle and the Tavistock in London. In particular, it reflects the efforts of my outstanding colleagues in those places – the grafters and thinkers who have extended the boundaries of scientific research in our field. To them, I owe a great deal, and it is to them that I dedicate this honour.