{{Short description|Irish psychiatrist (1929–2024)}} {{EngvarB|date=October 2013}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}} {{Infobox person | name = Ivor Browne | image = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = William Ivory Browne | birth_date = {{Birth date|1929|03|18|df=y}} | birth_place = Dublin, Ireland | death_date = {{Death date and age|2024|01|24|1929|03|13|df=y}} | death_place = Dublin, Ireland | other_names = | known_for = | occupation = Psychiatrist }}
'''William Ivory "Ivor" Browne''' (18 March 1929 – 24 January 2024) was an Irish psychiatrist and author who was Chief Psychiatrist of the Eastern Health Board, and professor emeritus of psychiatry at University College Dublin.<ref name=RTE>{{cite web |url= http://www.rte.ie/tv/wouldyoubelieve/ivorbrowne.html|title= Would You Believe – Ivor Browne|publisher=RTÉ |accessdate=13 June 2010}}</ref> He was best known for his theory of trauma as being at the root cause of many psychiatric diagnoses, as well as his early therapeutic use of psychedelics. He was also known for his opposition to traditional psychiatry, and his scepticism about psychiatric drugs.<ref name=post2008>{{Citation|last=Nolan |first=Markham |title=The drugs don't work |newspaper=The Sunday Business Post |date=4 May 2008 |url=http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2008/05/04/story32479.asp |accessdate=13 June 2010 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100108093055/http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2008/05/04/story32479.asp |archivedate=8 January 2010 }}</ref> Browne died on 24 January 2024, at the age of 94.<ref name="IT">{{cite news |last1=McGarry |first1=Patsy |title=Groundbreaking Irish psychiatrist Ivor Browne dies aged 94 |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/01/24/groundbreaking-irish-psychiatrist-ivor-browne-dies-aged-94/ |access-date=24 January 2024 |work=The Irish Times |date=24 January 2024}}</ref>
==Early life and education== Ivor Browne was born on 18 March 1929,<ref name="IT"/><ref>{{Cite web |title=In praise of Ivor Browne: groundbreaker, lifesaver |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/in-praise-of-ivor-browne-groundbreaker-lifesaver-1.2924489 |access-date=2024-12-08 |website=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref> to a middle-class family from Sandycove, Dublin. He said that he was an often miserable child who was prone to daydreaming.<ref name="indo2008a">{{Citation |last=Spain |first=John |title=The man who railed against Ireland's shameful Bedlam |date=5 April 2008 |url=http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/the-man-who-railed-against-irelands-shameful-bedlam-1339109.html |newspaper=Irish Independent|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080411050005/https://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/the-man-who-railed-against-irelands-shameful-bedlam-1339109.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=11 April 2008 |accessdate=13 June 2010}}</ref> He attended secondary school at Blackrock College, where he discovered jazz music, and began playing the trumpet. After Blackrock College, he went to a secretarial school, and gained admission to the Royal College of Surgeons. He said that his intention was to become a jazz musician and that he only took up medicine to please his parents. During his time in the College of Surgeons, he had several bouts of tuberculosis, which diverted him from being a musician.<ref name=indo2008a/>
==Career== In 1955, he became a qualified doctor. According to Browne, his professor of medicine in the Richmond Hospital told him that: "You're only fit to be an obstetrician or a psychiatrist." He had little interest in general medicine, and decided to become a psychiatrist. He started his internship in a neurosurgical unit, where he assisted a surgeon.<ref name=indo2008a/> He said of his work there: {{Cquote|Nearly every Saturday morning one or two patients would be sent down from Grangegorman to have their brains 'chopped'... this was the major lobotomy procedure... where burr holes were drilled on each side of the temples and a blunt instrument inserted to sever the frontal lobes almost completely from the rest of the brain.<ref name=indo2008a/> }}
Browne went on to work in the United Kingdom and in the United States. He was awarded a scholarship to study public and community mental health at Harvard University.<ref name="cork">{{Citation|title=Ivor Browne – Music and Madness|url=http://www.corkuniversitypress.com/Ivor_Browne:_Music_and_Madness_/293/|accessdate=13 June 2010|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110708193055/http://www.corkuniversitypress.com/Ivor_Browne%3A_Music_and_Madness_/293/|archivedate=8 July 2011}}</ref> After returning to Ireland, he became the fifth Medical Superintendent of Grangegorman Mental Hospital (St. Brendan's) in 1966<ref>{{Cite book|last=O'Shea|first=Brian|title=150 Years of British Psychiatry. Volume II: the Aftermath|author2=Falvey, Jane|publisher=Athlone|others=German E. Berrios|year=1996|editor=Hugh Freeman|location=London|pages=407–33|chapter=A history of the Richmond Asylum (St. Brendan's Hospital), Dublin}}</ref> and he was made Professor of psychiatry at University College Dublin and Chief Psychiatrist of the Eastern Health Board.<ref name=RTE/> He retired from St Brendan's Hospital in the mid-1990s.<ref>{{cite web|date=7 June 2007|title=Doctor defends shredding of records|url=http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=11671|publisher=Irish Health|accessdate=9 May 2019|archive-date=9 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190509173518/http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html%3Fid%3D11671|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|date=20 February 2017|title=Is Pain a Path to Wisdom? The Writings of Ivor Browne?|url=https://psychiatryandsongs.com/2017/02/20/review-of-the-writings-of-ivor-browne-when-is-pain-just-pain/|publisher=Psychiatry and Songs|accessdate=9 May 2019}}</ref>
== Work on trauma == In his book ''Ivor Browne, the Psychiatrist: Music and Madness''<ref>{{Cite book|last=Browne|first=Ivor|url=https://www.amazon.com/-/es/gp/product/B007BO4FV8/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2|title=Ivor Browne, the Psychiatrist: Music and Madness|date=2009-03-30}}</ref>'','' he speaks of the concept of trauma stored in the body as 'the frozen present', unprocessed emotions, a concept he had originally published decades before.<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Psychological Trauma, or Unexperienced Experience|url=https://enso.pt/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/UnexperiencedExperience-Browne.pdf|journal=Re-vision}}</ref> At the time, his work received very little attention from the psychiatric profession, however his work paved the way for the later work of Dr Gabor Mate<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Maté|first1=MD Gabor|title=In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction|last2=Ph.D|first2=Peter A. Levine|date=2010-01-05|publisher=North Atlantic Books |isbn=978-1556438806 }}</ref> and Dr Bessel Van der Kolk on trauma.<ref>{{Cite book|last=M.D|first=Bessel van der Kolk|title=The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma|date=2015-09-08|publisher=Penguin Publishing |isbn=978-0143127741 }}</ref>
Browne's idea of trauma of "the frozen present" becomes a key part to understanding how he looks at psychiatric and psychotherapeutic work.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} In an article published in ''Network Ireland'' magazine, Browne explains his attitude to trauma.
{{blockquote|Once that shut down (through a traumatic experience) happens, then that experience is frozen. So it is not a case of a threatening memory being repressed, it is that it has never gotten in properly. Once it is frozen it is outside of time, so twenty years later this can be activate – some everyday event can trigger it – and you then experience it as if it is happening now. You don’t think about it and remember it – you feel it and experience it. And of course at that point you think you are going nuts because you look around and nothing traumatic is happening, yet you experience this traumatic feeling. That is why I called it "the frozen present", because when it comes, it comes through as the present, not as the past. Eventually when it works its way through and you experience it a few times then it moves into the past.}}
{{blockquote|"The best example is grief" Ivor says, "if you have lost someone you have to do a lot of work over time in order to integrate that to allow it to become a memory. Then it becomes less threatening. When my wife died five years ago, the first year was absolute hell, and I couldn’t imagine feeling any joy. The second year was bad, but not quite as bad as the first. Now after five years I am quite contented. I have a different life.' By processing the trauma, it has shifted into memory, but this approach is not possible in the current psychiatric model."<ref>{{Cite web|title=Ivor Browne: The Frozen Present|url=https://networkmagazine.ie/articles/ivor-browne-frozen-present|access-date=2021-06-13|website=networkmagazine.ie|language=en}}</ref>}}
His work on trauma influenced, and was influenced by, the work of Dr Stan Grof.<ref>{{Citation|title=Oliver Williams – Psychological Trauma: The life work of Ivor Browne, M.D.| date=5 December 2019 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYJdlsk9BWc |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211215/JYJdlsk9BWc |archive-date=2021-12-15 |url-status=live|language=en|access-date=2021-06-13}}{{cbignore}}</ref> In 1985, Browne published an article in the ''Irish Journal of Psychiatry'', entitled "Psychological Trauma, or Unexperienced Experience" which at the time receive no citations. Stan Grof believed in the importance of Browne's work,{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} and republished the article in ''Revision'' magazine in 1990.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Psychological Trauma, or Unexperienced Experience|url=https://enso.pt/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/UnexperiencedExperience-Browne.pdf}}</ref>
===Attitude to drugs===
Browne experimented with LSD as a means to encourage regression experiences both in his personal life and professionally.<ref name=times2008>{{Cite news |last=Benson |first=Ciaran |title=Book Reviews: An elusive, unorthodox outsider |newspaper=The Irish Times |date=19 April 2008 |url=http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2008/0419/1208468781683.html |accessdate=14 June 2010 |url-status=bot: unknown |archiveurl=https://archive.today/20121108175145/http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2008/0419/1208468781683.html |archivedate= 8 November 2012 }}</ref><ref name=indo2008b>{{Cite news | last = Dwyer | first = Ciara | title = A fearless maverick with ideals | newspaper = Irish Independent | date = 18 May 2008 | url = http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/news-gossip/a-fearless-maverick-with-ideals-1379005.html | accessdate = 14 June 2010}}</ref> He has campaigned against what he sees as an overuse of medications in modern psychiatry. He said: {{Cquote|When someone is depressed, [doctors] assume that this is caused by a disturbance in your biochemistry, which must be related to some sort of genetic thing in your personality. What I would want to know is what has happened in that person's past and their present that is disturbing their biochemistry and making them depressed? Our behaviour has an immediate and far-reaching effect on our chemical balance, but that question's not asked. Even as you and I are sitting here discussing this, there are all sorts of changes happening in your neurochemistry and in your body – so it's highly dynamic.<ref name=post2008/>}} He has used psychiatric medications with his patients, but he said that he used a fraction of the drugs prescribed by modern psychiatrists.<ref name=post2008/>
===Community work=== Browne set up the Irish Foundation for Human Development, and started the first community association in Ireland in Ballyfermot, which worked to try to turn it into a thriving community.<ref name=cork/>
== References == {{reflist}}
==Bibliography== * Ivor Browne, ''Music and Madness'' (Cork, Cork University Press, 2010).
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Browne, Ivor}} Category:1929 births Category:2024 deaths Category:Irish psychiatrists Category:Academics of University College Dublin Category:20th-century Irish people Category:21st-century Irish people Category:Medical doctors from County Dublin Category:People educated at Blackrock College Category:People from Sandycove