Chapter Six - Fraser House Milieu
ORIENTATING
This is the first of five chapters on Fraser House researching the
questions, ‘What
change processes, innovations and social action evolved in and from Fraser
House? How do these differ from other psychiatric therapeutic communities? What
were the outcomes and effects of Fraser House?
This chapter gives an overview of Fraser House’s milieu and Neville’s
processes for evolving it as a micro-model in exploring epochal transition.
Neville’s assuming a social basis of mental illness is discussed along with his
emphasis on and strategic use of locality, layout, and mix of patients. Chapter Seven discusses the Fraser House
Re-socializing Program entailing patient self-governance. Chapter Eight
discusses Fraser House Big Meeting of all staff, patients, outpatients and
guests, as well as Neville’s group processes. Chapter Nine looks at the change
processes evolved at Fraser House, and Neville’s evolving of Cultural Keyline from Keyline is analysed.
Chapter Ten looks critically at Fraser House, and details ethical and other
issues in replicating Fraser House. Neville’s actions in closing down Fraser
House are outlined and the implications of locality and networks within Fraser
House are discussed.
INTRODUCING FRASER
HOUSE
Neville set out to evolve a very
rich inferential social place (Pinkard 1995, p. 115) at Fraser House approximating the richness of the family’s
farms. Neville planned to gather marginalized dysfunctional people to his
social place where they could sort out and re-constitute their own inferences
together. Neville understood the potential of dysfunctional societal processes
external to self, evoking mindbody disintegration and
dysfunctional networks. Neville created a social place, space and climate
whereby dysfunctional people could be energized to re-constitute themselves towards wellbeing, and to let go of dysfunctional
tensions and contradictions permeating through them from prior struggles in
socially toxic places.
Neville planned to take in people fractured by living in dysfunctional social contexts and places in society, whom society’s response was in Neville’s view (Dec 1993, July 1998) to place in even more dysfunctional anti-social contexts and places - asylum back wards and prisons. In contrast to these total institutions (Goffman 1961), Neville wanted to create a social space where people and their family and friends could ‘genuinely find themselves at home in it’, and be able to constitute their own inferential functional space of their own mutual making, and to reconstitute their social networks towards functionality, and take these functional networks out and create their own functional social spaces back in wider society. How Fraser House differed from other total institutions is detailed in Appendix 3).
During the years
1956 to 1959 Neville began laying the groundwork to set up Fraser House. The
commencing focus-of-action was to be a very innovative and iconoclastic
therapeutic community based psychiatric unit. Neville set up the unit as Fraser
House in 1959 within
That the Unit would engage in prolonged continual action research into
epochal transition[1]
through re-constituting both people and people-in-community as they were
evolving together shared everyday realities that fostered wellbeing.
Neville followed
through on this intention - later describing Fraser House as, ‘the most
significant psycho-social research institute in this State’ (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol. 4, p. 24).
Neville was
familiar with Marx’s sociological writings about the interplay between
concurrently re-constituting people and society – that societies are socially
constituted realities, and that these realities concurrently fold back, as it
were, to constitute people as varied constitutions of these realities. Comminel (1987, p.135) quotes Marx (1844) who wrote:
Thus the social character is the general character of the whole
movement: just as society itself produces man as man, so is society produced
by him.
Marx writes
immediately after the above quote of the interplay of activity, enjoyment and
nature:
Activity and enjoyment, both in their content and their mode of
existence, are social: social activity and social enjoyment. The human aspect
of nature exists only for social man: for only then does nature exist for him
as a bond with man… Thus society is the complete unity of man with nature – the
true resurrection of nature – the accomplished naturalism of man and the
accomplished humanism of nature.
Neville was extending natural thrival processes in nature to exploring human nature
emerging from communal bonding: the above interplay of action and enjoyment
discussed by Marx.
Neville included the following
diagram in his 1971 paper, ‘Mental Health and Social Change’ (1971c; 1971b) in succinctly specifying his view of epochal transition
process.
In describing the form of the shift
Neville wrote:
The take off point for the next
cultural synthesis, (point D1 in the above diagram) typically occurs in a
marginal culture (1971, p. 1).
In my understanding in Cultural Keyline terms, Neville timed and positioned Fraser House at
D1. In ‘Keyline form’, Fraser House was just below
the steep fall off the main ridge (mainstream asylums in crisis) at a Keypoint in a ‘primary valley‘ on the margins of the
decline of the old cultural synthesis and the first beginnings of a new
cultural synthesis.
Diagram
2 Neville’s Diagram recast in Keyline
terms
Neville chose to populate the Fraser House enclave from the
‘marginal culture’ of the mad and bad from the dysfunctional fringe of the old
cultural synthesis in
It develops a relatively anarchical value orientation system (1971b, p.
1).
This aptly describes Fraser House; values oriented the unit.
While the values were deemed anarchy by some in the health hierarchy, this was
relative to their top down control of the disempowered. Neville evolved a
patient self governance based value system energising patient empowerment.
Neville then writes in his ‘Mental Health’ paper about the old cultural
synthesis in decline becoming dedifferentiated (uniform and undifferentiated)
with little innovation:
Its social institutions dedifferentiate and power slips away from them.
This power moves into lower level, newer, smaller and more radical systems
within the society. Uncertainty increases and with it rumour (1971b, p. 1).
Neville spoke (Dec 1993) of Fraser House being placed as one
of the ‘lower level, newer, smaller and more radical systems within the
society’ that he wrote about in his ‘Mental Health’ paper (1971c; 1971b). Also referencing the same paper,Neville ensured that ‘uncertainty and with it
rumour’ abounded about how Fraser House mismatched the psychiatry of the old
cultural synthesis. Another quote from Neville’s ‘Mental Health’ paper (1971c; 1971b):
Also an epidemic of experimental organizations develop.
Many die away but those most functionally attuned to future trends survive and
grow (1971b, p. 1).
Fraser House was just such an ‘experimental organization’.
In terms of the old cultural system, these ‘experimental organisations’ are
like an epidemic – spreading viral like; the Sixties and Seventies saw the
emergence of all manner of interest in alternative living. Neville was
constantly engaged in action research into how well Fraser House was
‘functionally attuned to future trends’ so it could ‘survive and grow.’
To protect Fraser
House from attack, very few people knew of Neville’s epochal-transition agenda.
This agenda and Neville’s adapting of Keyline and
Indigenous way were never mentioned in any of Neville’s writings of the period.
The only people I interviewed who knew of this agenda were Ken and Stephanie Yeomans, and his Fraser House personal assistant Margaret Cockett. Neville did have the support of people at the top
of the Health Department who, I understand, also did not know of Neville’s
wider agenda. It was commonly known that Fraser House would be an experimental
unit and a therapeutic community. Initially only Neville knew how iconoclastic
he intended it to become.
Window of Opportunity
Neville had completed degrees in zoology, medicine and further studies
to become a psychiatrist in the mid Fifties. In 1956, three years prior to
setting up Fraser House, Neville initiated the first group psychotherapy
program for schizophrenics in Gladesville Hospital (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol
.12, p. 66 - 69). Similar to the mood change in psychiatry in England after
the Second World War (discussed in Chapter Three), Neville recognized that,
with considerable upheaval and questioning in the area of mental health in New
South Wales, and a Royal Commission being mooted into past practices - there
was a small window of opportunity for innovation in the mental health area. The
New South Wales Health Department built the Fraser House residential unit
especially for Neville. Neville was aged thirty-one when he obtained the
go-ahead from the New South Wales Health Department to take in patients at
Fraser House.
Photo 1 Neville and nurse at Fraser House in 1960 (Yeomans 1965a).
Fraser House was located in the grounds of
LAYOUT, LOCALITY, AND CULTURAL LOCALITY
Fraser House was
a set of buildings over a quarter of a kilometre long. The buildings were set
in a long wiggly pattern along the contour line – refer Diagram 8 below.
From my
reckoning, the building is along a Keyline, and
Neville’s office was at the Keypoint. (I had already noted this
when in 2001 Jack Wells, who is familiar with Keyline
and worked at Fraser House in the early 1970's after Neville had left, also
spotted the Keyline connection in the Unit's layout
and told me about this. I met Wells through a conference festival that Neville
helped evolve called ConFest - discussed in Chapter
Eleven.
Photo 2
Jack Wells at ConFest – From DTE Archives
The buildings
were linked by enclosed walkways. While Fraser House was specially built for
Neville, he had no say in aspects of the design layout. The Health Department
‘system’ required complete separation of males and females in different wards.
A single story administration building was in the middle. At one end of the
central administration section was a meeting room (approximately eight metres
by sixteen metres) where the big meetings were held.
Photo
3 A photo I took in June 1999 of Fraser House
through the trees along Keyline
The diagram below shows
At either end of the administration block there was a double story 39
bed ward, and there was a dining room at each end. There was a separate staff
office in each ward. Most rooms were 4 bed dormitories. There were a few single
rooms in each ward.
In Fraser House,
the State system’s intention to have a division of sexes in separated wards
would have been ‘shattering’ any chance of what Neville called ‘total
community’, ‘transitional community’ and ‘balanced community’. Neville viewed
the original planned (by the system) use of space as ‘schizoid’ - completely
divisive, split - creating ‘them and us’ and ‘no go’ areas for both patients and
staff. Neville saw this separation of the sexes (with administration as a
‘wall’ between them) as isomorphic with dysfunctional community. Warwick Bruen was a psychologist at Fraser House in the early
1960’s. In a 1998 interview, Bruen described the
initial separation of sexes into different wards required by the health
department as, ‘an extension of the medical infection model’.
Diagram 3.
Map of section of
The female ward
opened in October 1960. Neville rearranged room allocation so there were no
separate wards for males and females, although bedrooms remained same sex. This
required some negotiating between Neville and the male staff and unions as
there was resistance to this change.
Photo 4 Photo I took in June 1999 of one wing
of the Fraser House Dorms
After the Unit was running for a time, eight downstairs rooms were set
aside for families-in-residence. The eight cots were also in these rooms.
School-age child patients at Fraser House attended local schools.
Neville arranged
for the dining room at one end to be used by all patients. The other dining
room was turned into a TV, games and recreation room. This created the
necessity for patients and staff alike to walk more than quarter of a kilometre
wending through each building and along covered walkways between buildings to
go to these popular places. The dining room, the lounge room and the long
corridor between them were all public spaces conducive to meeting and talking.
Fraser House was a replication of the community space of the
ASSUMING A SOCIAL
BASIS OF MENTAL ILLNESS
Neville evolved
Fraser House assuming a social basis of mental illness. This has links to the
important role social cohesion plays in preventing mind-body-spirit sickness in
Australian Aboriginal culture (Cawte 1974; Cawte
2001).
Regardless of
conventional diagnosis, in Fraser House it was assumed that dysfunctional
patients would have a dysfunctional inter-personal family friendship network.
This networked dysfunctionality was the focus of
change.
Consistent with
this, the Fraser House treatment was sociologically oriented. It was based upon
a social model of mental dis-ease and a social model
of change to ease and wellbeing. Neville
said (July 1998) that he and all involved in Fraser House worked with the
notion that the patients’ life difficulties were in the main, from ‘cracks’ in
society, not them. Neville took this social basis of mental illness not out of
an ignorance of diagnosis. Neville was a government advisor on psychiatric
diagnosis as a member of the Committee of Classification of Psychiatric
Patterns of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.
Neville was
familiar with twin sociological notions that people are social products and at
the same time people together constitute their social reality (Marx 1844; Berger and Luckmann 1967). Neville said (June 1998), that he took as a starting
framework that people’s internal and external experience, along with their
interpersonal linking with family, friends, and wider society, are all
interconnected and interdependent. Given this, Neville held to the view that
pathological aspects of society and community, and dysfunctional social
networks give rise to criminality and mental dis-ease
in the individual. As well, his view was that ‘mad’ and ‘bad’ behaviours emerge
from dysfunctionality in family and friendship
networks. This was compounded by people feeling like they did not belong -
being displaced from place (dislocated). Problematic behaviours may be
experienced as feeling bad or feeling mad, or feeling mad and bad.
While Neville
recognized massively interconnected causal process were at work, he also
recognized and emphasized this macro to micro direction of complex interwoven
causal processes within the psychosocial dimension. Working with the above
framework, Neville set out to use a Keyline
principle, ‘do the opposite’ to interrupt and reverse dysfunctional psychosocial
and psychobiological processes (biopsychosocial).
That is, he would design social and community processes that would inevitably
lead to Fraser House Residents re-constituting their lives towards living well
together.
Neville told me (Sept, 1998) a
number of times that the aim and outcome of Fraser House therapeutic processes
was ‘balancing emotional expression’ towards being a ‘balanced friendly person’
who could easy live firstly, within the Fraser House community, and then in
their new, expanded, and functional network in the wider community. The Fraser
House process didn’t require or need ‘intellectual’ therapy. Neville’s view
(Dec, 1993, June-August, 1998) was that the intellect is the ‘servant of
emotions’ and ‘servant of reproductive and survival instincts’. Neville said
(Sept, 1998) that many Fraser House patients returned to functionality with
little by way of insight about what had happened to them. Neville said (Dec,
1993) that what they were researching at the Unit was whether sharing everyday
Fraser House milieu would lead to emotional corrective experience and a move to
functional living in the wider society.
Neville wanted to create a special place where people could evolve their
own way of life (their own culture) together; where they could evolve
themselves as they evolved their shared reality. While all manner of things
were awry with patients – cognitively, mentally, physically, emotionally, and
socially – within the Fraser house milieu, all structure and process framed and
actuated the ‘community’ as the inevitable central transforming process in the
therapeutic community, regardless of a patient’s presenting condition
and conventional diagnosis.
LOCALITY AS CONNEXION TO PLACE
Resonant with Tikopia, Neville created
opportunities for Fraser House residents to respect and celebrate their
diversity in creating social unity and cohesion as the Fraser House Community.
While Fraser House was located in the grounds of the
Neville created Tönnies'
small village community (Tönnies and Loomis 1963). Like in Tikopia, with all of the
constant social exchange, any strife soon became common knowledge and following
the Fraser House slogan ‘no madness and badness here’, typically, it was
interrupted before it could start. Patients had little or no such spaces and
places outside of Fraser House that allowed for, and fostered people engaging
in conversing and community building with friends, relatives and strangers. The
shared community life in Fraser House ‘public space’ meant that people
continually talked to and about each other, and hence, like on Tikopia, social news was continually circulating. In Fraser
House, this circulating of social news was encouraged by the slogan, ‘bring it
up in a group’. At certain times of each day there was a mingling flow of
females and males from one end of Fraser House to the other along a winding
long passageway that mirrored the mountain trails between both sides of