Person

Ellery, Reginald Spencer (1897 - 1955)

Born
12 August 1897
Rose Park, South Australia, Australia
Died
27 December 1955
Prahran, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Psychiatrist

Summary

Reg Ellery was a pioneer of psychoanalysis in Australia and the most prominent psychiatrist in Australia between wars. Between 1923 and 1931 he worked in various capacities, and at several medical facilities, for the Victorian Department of Mental Health. Even at this early stage he attracted controversy. In 1924 a Royal Commission was convened into his attempts to improve conditions at the Children's Cottages where unsanitary conditions and widespread infection were rampant: he was exonerated. From 1931 he was in private practice, bureaucratic resistance to psychoanalytical methods having proved too much for him. He initiated new treatments emanating from Europe and seemed to delight in taking on the medical and psychiatric establishment. He was a founding Member of the Medico-Legal Society of Victoria and attended the first meeting of the Association of Australasian Psychiatrists.

Details

Chronology

1923
Education - MB BS, University of Melbourne
1923 - 1924
Career position - Junior Medical Officer, Kew Asylum for the Insane, Melbourne
1925 - 1927
Career position - Medical Officer, Sunbury State Mental Hospital, Victoria
1925 - 1931
Career position - Psychiatric clinic assistant, Royal Melbourne Hospital
1927 - 1931
Career position - Medical Officer, Mont Park Hospital, Melbourne
1931 -
Career position - Consultant alienist, Women's Hospital, Melbourne
1931
Education - MD, University of Melbourne
1931
Career event - Founding member, Medico-Legal Society of Victoria
1931 - 1946
Career position - Honorary consultant Psychiatrist, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne
1931 - 1955
Career position - In private practice
1940 - 1955
Career position - Foundation Director, Melbourne Institute for Psycho-Analysis
9 October 1946
Career event - Attended first meeting of the Association of Australasian Psychiatrists

Related Corporate Bodies

Archival resources

State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection

  • Reginald Spencer Ellery - Records, 1910 - 1950, MS 7979; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection. Details

Published resources

Books

  • Ellery, R. S., The cow jumped over the moon: private papers of a psychiatrist (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1956), 287 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Gurciullo, Sebastian, 'Ellery, Reginald Spencer (1897-1955), psychiatrist and author' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 14: 1940 - 1980 Di-Kel, John Ritchie, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996), pp. 89-90. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A140102b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

  • Kaplan, R. M., 'Psychiatric gadfly: in search of Reginald Ellery', Australasian psychiatry, 20 (2012), 7-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1039856211430144. Details
  • Kaplan, Robert M., 'Reginald Ellery, a towering and multifaceted figure in Australian psychiatry', Australasian psychiatry, 19 (5) (2011), 444-5. https://doi.org/10.3109/10398562.2011.613474. Details
  • Kaplan, Robert M., 'The First Psychiatric Royal Commission: Reg Ellery and the Attendants at Kew Hospital', Health and History, 16 (1) (2014), 45-65. Details
  • Kaplan, Robert M., 'A radical psychiatrist and the law: the forensic career of Reg Ellery', Australasian Psychiatry, 23 (2) (2015), 183-6. Details
  • Kaplan, Robert M., 'Reg Ellery and the establishment of psychoanalysis in Australia', Health & History, 17 (1) (2015), 37-52. Details
  • Kaplan, Robert M., 'The MJA editor, the radical psychiatrist, and the communist agenda: Mervyn Archdall and Reg Ellery', Health and history, 22 (2) (2020), 85-90. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5401.healthhist.22.2.00185. Details
  • Martin, I., 'Reginald Spencer Ellery', Medical journal of Australia, 1956:1 (1956), 681. Details

Resources

Theses

  • Stevenson, T., 'Measuring the stars and observing the less visible: Australia's participation in the Astrographic Catalogue and Carte du Ciel', Thesis, University of Sydney, 2015, 381 pp. Details

Gavan McCarthy [P004098] and Helen Cohn

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