Irene Champernowne was a leading psychotherapist and art therapist. 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. She is most well known for founding the Withymead Centre, one of the earliest therapeutic communities in Western Europe.

In the 1930s Champernowne made regular visits to Vienna and 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.

In the mid-1930s she met her husband Gilbert Champernowne, they married in 1938 and together they opened the Withymead Centre in 1942. 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. 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 In her unpublished autobiography, she vividly describes her process of creativeness – living with a painting until the next episode of the narrative is revealed.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.

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.

She went on seeing her patients up to the week before her death in 1976, aged 75.