The Tavistock Centre is a mental health trust located a couple of minutes’ walk from the Freud Museum, where Sigmund Freud lived and his daughter Anna practised. Set in the Hampstead foothills, it’s a leafy corner of North London renowned for its psychotherapeutic history and illustrious connections. Carl Jung gave lectures at the Tavistock in one of its early incarnations and over the years the clinic has established an international reputation for expertise in medical psychology.
But in the past two decades, its image has increasingly become synonymous with one particular department within the centre, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). The service, which has treated thousands of young people suffering from gender dysphoria (discomfort with their born gender), has found itself at the centre of the dispute about the nature of transgenderism.
It’s a dispute that forms part of a larger culture war concerning identity and rights which has spread across the globe, including to New Zealand. The recent tour of the controversial women’s rights campaigner Posie Parker was cut short amid protests and claims of transphobia. But it is also, in the case of the Tavistock, a dispute about science, best practice and the protection of young and vulnerable people.
So fraught is the debate around gender that the story of what took place at the clinic has struggled to be heard.
Critics, including some of the centre’s own staff, have accused the clinic of being hijacked by trans activists and of enacting policies designed to hasten troubled adolescents towards hormonal treatments and gender transition.
Following an acutely critical interim report on GIDS by consultant paediatrician Hilary Cass, it is due to close and be replaced with regional services.
