George Ronald Hargreaves OBE, FRCP, MRCS (14 July 1908 – 18 December 1962) was a civilian and military psychiatrist.
He was educated at Mill Hill School and then studied medicine at University College London, where he was involved in the students' dramatic society.
[2] Hargreaves was unable to take up this appointment because the death of his father[dubious][1] required him to take paid work to support his younger siblings.
Hargreaves was reluctant to spend time on unnecessary postgraduate training and examinations[3] when he had already secured the first openings in his chosen specialism.
When World War II broke out, Hargreaves volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps to serve as a psychiatrist.
His research into causes of psychoneuroses in soldiers demonstrated that men with no predisposition to psychological breakdown, based on family history and childhood behaviour, were still at risk.
He shaped the work conducted at Northfield Military Hospital by encouraging Harold Bridger to follow up on the group therapy work that Wilfred Bion and John Rickman had initiated, and by passing information on the Northfield experiments to Karl Menninger for the Journal of the Menninger Clinic.