Winifred Rushforth and the Davidson Clinic for Medical Psychotherapy: a case study in the overlap of psychotherapy, Christianity and New Age spirituality

Abstract

The activities of both Winifred Rushforth (1885–1983), and the Edinburgh-based Davidson Clinic for Medical Psychotherapy (1941–73) which she directed, exemplify and elaborate the overlap in Scotland of religious discourses and practices with psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Even as post-war secularization began to affect Scottish culture and society, Rushforth and the Davidson Clinic attempted to renew the biographical discourses of Christianity using the idioms and practices of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Furthermore, alongside these Christian-inflected activities, Rushforth promoted a psychoanalytically-informed New Age spirituality. This parallel mode of belief and practice drew on Christian life-narrative patterns, preserving them within psychoanalytic forms grafted onto a vitalist worldview informed by the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.