Dates

• Existence: 1901 - 1976

Parallel Names

• Broomhall, Honor Irene
• Champernowne, Honor Irene

Biography

Irene Champernowne was a leading psychotherapist in the UK, who pioneered the integrating power of creativeness to improve mental health, and whose vision was to make psychotherapy available to all. Influenced by Carl Jung’s psychological theories, Champernowne pioneered art therapy as a source of treatment which is still used in today’s therapeutic practices.

Irene Champernowne was born in 1901 in Newington Green, London, UK. She grew up in a religious household, her father had been a missionary in China, and she retained a deep faith throughout her life. Irene was the eldest of two daughters, and attended the City of London Girls' School. Her adolsescence occurred against the backdrop of the First World War. An early formative experience was that of a cousin she was close to, who had been so affected by his experience as a soldier that he had a breakdown and was hospitalised for the rest of his life. Because of this, Champernowne wanted to follow a vocation that alleved mental suffering.

Champernowne was later a student at Birkbeck, University of London. However, the strain of her studies and working at the same time to financially support herself led to considerable stress, and by 1925 she was exhausted and depressed. After she graduated, her parents sent her to recover with friends on a farm for a year, and being back in touch with nature helped her recovery. Afterwards she went for analyses at the Tavistock Clinic with Leonard Brown, and this lasted for three years.

When Champernowne became an assistant at Gipsy Hill Teachers' Training College, she made it a condition of her employment that she study psychology abroad for half the year. Through her yearly visits to Vienna, Champernowne made connections with prominent psychologists, psychotherapists and analysts such as Dr Leonhard Seif, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and Toni Wolff. The latter two she had regular analytic sessions with 1937 - 1938.

At this time she was also being mentored by Helton 'Peter' Baynes, and it was from Baynes she learnt about art therapy and with his encouragement became a psychotherapist and started treating her first patients. She obtained her B.Sc. in Psychology in 1938.

In the mid-1930s she met her husband Gilbert Champernowne, they married in 1938 and together they opened the Withymead Centre in 1942. The Withymead Centre was one of the earliest therapeutic communities in Western Europe. The Centre upended the existing custodial model for those who were experiencing mental health difficulties, where people were kept out of sight and had little choice in their treatment. In contrast, the Centre delivered a treatment model based on Jung’s theories and methods. The model blended together art, music and dance-movement therapy with clinical support, including individual psychotherapy sessions, in a community environment that sought to create lasting rehabilitation. In creating and managing Withymead, Champernowne proved herself a pioneering, and sometimes domineering, leader, showing strength and determination to enact her vision.

Champernowne was undergoing analysis throughout her life, and she regularly shared the contents of her dreams with friends and colleagues for interpretation. After Champernowne obtained her B.Sc. in psychology, she travelled to Zurich where she had regular analytic sessions with Jung. She found Jung’s analysis, particularly of her dreams, “extraordinarily revealing”. Champernowne learned about the therapeutic importance of the arts partly from her work with Jung. As a follower of Jung, Champernowne attached great importance to the role of images and the imagination in psychological healing. In her unpublished autobiography, Champernowne vividly describes her process of creativeness – living with a painting until the next episode of the narrative is revealed.

Champernowne had an extensive network of people she worked with and from whom she sought support in her professional and personal life, and this was key to her life experience and her legacy. In particular, the following people were critical to Champernowne’s own development and in supporting the community life of Withymead - Gilbert Champernowne, Toni Wolff, Barbara Hannah, Helton ‘Peter’ Baynes, Carl Jung, Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, Rudolf Laban and Anthony Stevens - all of whom feature prominently in Champernowne's archive. Amy Buller is also believed to have been close to Champernowne, particularly with the running of the Cumberland Lodge courses, but interestingly there is very little of trace of Buller in Champernowne's archive.

After the closure of the Withymead Centre in 1967, Champernowne settled in the Cotswolds where people travelled for analysis with her, and where she continued to develop psychotherapy through the arts, delivering lectures and courses. She also endeavoured to keep the Centre's spirit alive. She formed the Withymead Association and the Gilbert Champernowne Trust, now known as The Champernowne Trust. As part of the Gilbert Champernowne Trust, she planned an annual residential course, and this later became a yearly summer course held at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

In the last 18 months of her life she was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, and she found great strength in a memory of a climbing trip in Switzerland, where she had complained to her guide that she would never manage the terrible looking peaks. He angrily replied, “That’s not your business. Your business is to look where you put your next foot. And enjoy the view!” She went on seeing her patients up to the week before her death in 1976, aged 75.

Irene Champernowne is not a name that is widely known today, but her theories and application of art therapy continue to inform and influence mental health and well-being treatments. The Champernowne Trust's summer courses held a strong connection with Champernowne’s original strategy, with arts and creative therapies influencing the practice of generations of therapists. Champernowne’s legacy can also be seen in Sheffield, with radical thinking about art therapy and mental health present in organisations such as Sheffield Flourish and the Art Therapy Northern Programme.

Found in 11 Collections and/or Records: