Chapter Eleven - Fraser House Outreach

 

 

ORIENTATING

 

This chapter details the various ways Neville extended Fraser House into wider society, and discusses how these varied social actions were consistent with Cultural Keyline and fitted into Neville’s evolving frameworks for fostering humane caring transitions in the global-local social-life folk world. The term ‘Functional Matrices’ is defined, and Neville’s evolving of them towards creating the Laceweb is discussed.

 

EXTENDING FRASER HOUSE WAY INTO THE PRIVATE SECTOR

 

Neville’s intention and outreach after leaving Fraser House is neatly stated in his 1980 letter to the Therapeutic Community Journal:

 

The Therapeutic Community model has been extended into humanitarian mutual help for social change’ (1980b)

 

Recall that Maxwell Jones had written:

 

The psychiatric hospital can be seen as a microcosm of society outside, and its social structure and culture can be changed with relative ease, compared to the outside. For this reason ‘therapeutic communities’ to date have been largely confined to psychiatric institutions. They represent a useful pilot run preliminary to the much more difficult task of trying to establish a therapeutic community for psychiatric purposes in society at large (1968, p. 86).

 

Having had his Fraser House experience, Neville was commencing to do just what Jones had been intimating – establishing therapeutic communities for psychiatric purposes in society at large. Neville began applying Cultural Keyline with the same pervasively interwoven and ‘total’ pattern of action of Fraser House process in many varied action research projects in the private sector. Neville created many contexts where people were sharing experience and responsibility in helping each other in evolving and sustaining social action research. In each context, the social reconstituting potency of the ongoing action research was as important, or more important than the outcomes. As in Fraser House, Neville’s intention was to explore Cultural Keyline in action - community processes for people embodying how to move towards being well together. The different outreach actions were interconnected with each other, as well as with Fraser House way. In each action Neville used all of the aspects of Cultural Keyline mentioned above - in broad terms:

 

1.      Attending and sensing and supporting self-organising, emergence, and Keypoints conducive to coherence within social contexts – monitoring theme, mood, values and interaction

2.      Forming cultural locality (people connecting together connecting to place)

3.      Strategic, design and emergent context-guided theme-based perturbing of the social topography

4.      Sensing and attending to the natural social system self-organising in response to the perturbing, and monitoring outcomes

 

A framing theme in all of the action research outreach was:

 

‘Exploring what works in community-based reconstituting of society through humane caring community mutual-help action - towards epochal change’.

 

Neville’s aims were:

 

  1. to explore re-constituting process among people on the margins within the old cultural synthesis, and then
  2. to move as far away as he could to evolve a new cultural synthesis - first Sydney, and then the Australia Top-End.

 

The ways in which Neville extended Fraser House processes into the wider community include:

 

1)            Taking on advisory roles with peak bodies in health and other areas – for legitimating and protecting action

2)            Taking Fraser House ways into the community by being Australia’s first Coordinator of Community Mental Health Services and setting up Community Mental Health Centres; Neville widening his scope of action to include community health using a biopsychosocial frame-work

3)            Extending intercultural action research towards global change by evolving links with many Asian and African community groups in Sydney

4)            Evolving (with others) festivals, gatherings and other happenings:

 

i)              Watsons Bay Festival   

ii)             The Paddington Festival, and from this, the evolving of Paddington Bazaar (a community market) for ‘villaging’ his first mental health centre (in Paddington)

iii)           Centennial Park Festival           

iv)           Other community events          

v)            Campbelltown Festival 

vi)           Aquarius Festival          

vii)         ConFest (Conference Festival)

viii)        Cooktown Arts Festival 

 

5)            Forming the Keyline Trust to spread the word on Keyline       

6)            Contributing suggestions which were adopted in divorce law reform, and spreading the use of mediation   

7)            Writing newspaper columns called ‘Keylines’ and ‘Yeomans Omens’

8)            Introducing Cultural Keyline implicitly to business and other organisations

9)            Forming and evolving self-help groups

10)        Becoming an election candidate          

 

ADVISORY ROLES

 

During the Sixties and early Seventies, Neville was very active in many advisory roles in mainstream organisations, including peak state and national bodies advising government. Neville said (Aug 1999) that he was intentionally very active on advisory bodies at this stage of his life in order to have, and sustain a very high public and professional profile, and to legitimate, protect, and support Fraser House and Fraser House outreach. This was the same reason he went out of his way to be featured in a constant stream of newspaper and magazine articles (1965a; 1965b). These links helped ensure Fraser House’s survival for as long as it did (discussions Neville, June-Oct, 1998; interview Cockett, April 1999).

 

Neville advised a number of health organisations as well as organisations focusing on softening drug and alcohol abuse, as well as Aboriginal Affairs and criminology. Neville was the chairperson and founding director of a number of them. For Example, Neville was a Member of the NSW State Clinicians Conference, a founding director of the NSW Foundation for the Research and Treatment of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency and a founding director of the national body of the above organization, a member of the Committee of Classification of Psychiatric Patterns of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and an advisor to the Research Committee of the New South Wales College of General Practitioners (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p. 96). Neville hinted to me (Aug 1998) that he had more than the twenty five advisory roles listed in Appendix 24.

 

The extent of Neville’s advisory work evidences firstly, the breadth of Neville’s acceptance in many spheres, secondly, his acceptance at the highest level in these peak advisory bodies, and thirdly, the breadth and inter-relatedness of his praxis.

 

COORDINATOR OF COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

 

Despite extensive enquiry, the best I could determine was that Neville finally left Fraser House some time in 1968/9. He began extending the model of the Lane Cove and Ryde Community Psychiatry Programs that he had energized prior to leaving Fraser House. Neville focused his energies on extending the healing ways evolved at Fraser House into ways of individual and communal self-help healing. He and his personal assistant Margaret Cockett were extending the therapeutic community option (as shown in Figures 1 and 3 in Chapter Ten) into the wider community as dispersed (not all living together) urban therapeutic communities. This was the precursor to the Laceweb as networked dispersed remote area therapeutic communities and networks.

 

Prior to leaving Fraser House, Neville had spoken continually of the need to create a new section within the NSW Public Health System called Community Mental Health. While still at Fraser House, Neville wrote a detailed monograph entitled, ‘The Role of a Director of Community Mental Health (Yeomans, N. 1965x). This was a proposal, a ‘job description’ and a ‘CV’ all rolled into one. His suggestion was adopted and upon leaving Fraser House he became the coordinator of the New South Wales Community Mental Health Services. Margaret Cockett characterizes Neville’s leaving Fraser House as his being ‘promoted upstairs’ - because he was becoming too well known, and also a threat to parts of the Health Department hierarchy.

 

Neville made ‘Margaret Cockett going with him as his personal assistant’ a condition of his taking the position of the first head of Community Mental Health; this was accepted. As an indication of the lack of support for this new section within the Health Department, Neville and Margaret were provided with an unfurnished room a couple of blocks down from the main Health Department building. According to Margaret Cockett (August 1999), some evenings in the few weeks after Neville got this new position, passers-by would have seen the two of them ‘spiriting’ ‘unwanted’ desks, filing cabinets, chairs and other little needs to make their section a little more functional. Neville and Margaret were finding it hard to get departmental cooperation. Neville said (July, 1998) that his Fraser House detractors in the health department were making things difficult for him in setting up Community Mental Health.

 

Neville set up Australia’s first Community Mental Health Clinic in 1969 in the vestry at the back of the Methodist Church in Oxford Street in Paddington. It was the first of such centres in Australia. Mangold, in his photographic record of the history of the Paddington Bazaar writes of Dr. Yeomans being the primary inspiration for realizing Reverend Peter Holden's dream of 'villaging the church' in Paddington (Mangold 1993, p. 4). The following two photos were taken by M. Mangold.

 

 

Photo 1. ‘Villaging’ the Church in Paddington – photo by M.Mangold - reproduced with permission

 

Neville’s suggestion was to surround the Paddington Community Mental Health Centre and the Church with a Saturday community bazaar. This was fully consistent with the Fraser House model of imbedding the Unit within the local community, as well as inviting the community into Fraser House.

 

In Photo 31 the Vestry where Neville had his first Community Mental Health Centre is the brick building on the left. The Church is on the right. Between and around both buildings is where the Paddington Bazaar is held each Saturday morning. Adjacent the Vestry was a hall Neville used for community meetings. This is where Neville and his friends planned a series of Festivals (Mangold 1993, p. 4-11). Neville wanted to create the public space of a small friendly village market reminiscent of Tikopia, where everybody knows everybody and meets each other regularly. Neville wanted to replicate the healing and integrative aspects of ‘small village life’ (Tönnies and Loomis 1963) of Fraser House around the vestry in Paddington. The community mental health centre has long gone, though Paddington Market survives to this day as a Sydney icon. Every Saturday morning crowds mingle and meet at the Bazaar. Buskers entertain. The place is vibrant and alive. It still serves as a public community place for enriching community life.

 

 

Photo 2 Mangold’s photo of where Neville’s Community Mental Health Centre was surrounded with community - reproduced with permission

 

The next section details Neville’s intercultural outreach.

 

Community Health

 

In 1968/69 there were moves to merge the Hospital’s Commission that ran the NSW State Hospitals and the Health Department that administered the hospital staff. According to Cockett (Sept 2004), this merger meant that many of the top people who had been opposed to Neville became focused on vying for who would get the top posts in the merged administration. Margaret Cockett said that during this time when there was some let up in the constant opposition, Neville took the opportunity to widen his thinking and action from Community Mental Health to Community Health.

 

Neville and Margaret began linking with as many people as they could that were initiating innovative action in the community towards health in the widest sense. Margaret said (Sept 2004) that when Neville and Margaret went looking for those broadening the views of community about ‘community’, very prevalent among the community innovators were Fraser House ex-patients and members of the Psychiatric Research Study Group. The late Sixties and early Seventies were times when there was a great spirit of change in the community and Neville and Margaret through their Fraser House action and momentum were well placed to be catalysts energising and linking possibilities. One aspect of this outreach by Neville and Margaret was forging links with the Asian and African community in Sydney discussed in the next section.

 

EVOLVING ASIAN LINKS

 

Neville’s interest in action towards epochal transition within intercultural contexts is further evidenced by his extensive involvement in cultural bodies during the late Sixties. He involved himself in the bodies listed below in the following roles (Aug, 1998):

 

Senior Vice President Japan - Australia Friendship Association

Councillor Japan - Australia Society

Council member Australia - Indonesia Association

Member:

   Africa - Australia Association

   Thailand - Australia Association

   Pakistan - Australia Association

   India League

   Australian Institute of Internal Affairs