Isabel Lyth

Menzies went to Madras College with a scholarship and she graduated with a double first in economics and experimental psychology at St Andrews in 1939, and became a lecturer there from 1939-45.

Menzies then moved to London to join them at the Tavistock Institute;[2] qualified as a psychoanalyst in 1954; and underwent a second training analysis with Bion himself.

[4] By establishing a rigid hierarchy, fixed psychological roles and a routinisation of work, the hospital was able to diffuse responsibility and anxiety from the individual nurse to the system as a whole.

That benefit came, however, at a cost:[5] the use of the primitive defences of splitting, denial and projection prevented more mature forms of coping with anxiety to emerge, and thus stifled individual growth.

[6] Menzies (Lyth) continued to explore the role of institutions in containing anxiety throughout her life, but conceded that, despite her wide theoretical acclaim, in practice institutional structures remained in large part impervious to psychoanalytic modification.