Robin Skynner

Robin Skynner (16 August 1922 in Cornwall – 24 September 2000 in Islington, London) was a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot who flew the Mosquito twin-engined fighter bomber, and was also a psychiatric pioneer and innovator in the field of treating mental illness.

Trained in Group Analysis and working as a child psychiatrist and a family therapist, he employed group-analytic principles in that therapeutic modality. He was a gifted teacher and practitioner of psychotherapy with individuals, groups, families, couples and institutions. He was also a prolific writer.

Born on 16 August 1922 at Charlestown, St Austell, Cornwall, Skynner was the eldest of five boys. He was educated at St Austell County School and at Blundell's School, after which, at the age of 18, he volunteered for the Royal Air Force, and was selected as a prospective bomber pilot. He was adversely affected by the destruction and slaughter he was obliged to participate in, an experience that, for a variety of complex reasons, drew him to psychiatry as an eventual vocation.

After demobilisation from RAF service, he enrolled as a student at University College Hospital and qualified MB, BS (Lond) in 1952. He then began his psychiatric training. In 1957 he passed the Diploma of Psychological Medicine. In 1971, he was elected MRCPsych, proceeding FRCPsych in 1976. He was successively the Director of the Woodberry Down Child Guidance Unit, Physician-in Charge of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Senior Tutor in Psychotherapy at the Institute of Psychiatry and Honorary Associate Consultant at the Maudsley Hospital.

Dr Foulkes, a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, was one of the founders of group analysis in Britain, a group approach developed out of Foulkes's treatment of war victims in Northfield Hospital, Birmingham. Foulkes was a pioneer, and quickly attracted the attention of others keen to change the way mental health patients were dealt with. Skynner was intrigued by Foulkes and by the early stages of the therapeutic community movement which was beginning to gather strength. He became Foulkes's pupil and later his patient in a group. Robin Skynner would readily admit he needed treatment himself.

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