ARTHUR HAMILTON CRISP

17th June 1930 – 13th October 2006

Arthur Crisp, one of the most distinguished psychiatrists of his generation, died on Friday, 13th October 2006.  He was Professor Emeritus of the 

University of London. Until his retirement in 1995 he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at St George’s 

Hospital Medical School and Vice-President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

 It was in the field of anorexia nervosa that Arthur’s international reputation for clinical research was founded.  He defined anorexia in its modern-day 

terms.  He determined its psychopathology, its aetiology and pathogenesis.  His statement that the core pathonomonic feature of anorexia is a 

phobic avoidance of normal body-weight has stood the test of time.  His treatment programme for anorexia was considered, in its day, the 

international gold standard. 

Arthur’s research was always unashamedly clinically focused and anchored in psychoso-matic medicine.  He explored the relationship between sleep 

and nutrition, investigated migraine and the psychosomatic aspects of myocardial infarction, irritable bowel and even writer’s cramp.  He conducted 

experimental studies of psychotherapeutic processes, overcoming the formidable difficulties of conducting a controlled evaluation of interpretative 

psychotherapy.  

To Arthur, research was dominant.  He claimed it was impossible for a good clinician not to be a researcher.  He even researched his hobbies.  One 

of these was a study of the River Wandle, a river that goes through the part of London in which St George’s is situated.  On one occasion he wished 

to photograph the river at dawn as it flowed close to our psychiatric hospital.  The best view could be got from the roof above the locked ward 

which contained some of its more disturbed patients.  Unfortunately, the door to the roof was blown shut by the wind and automatically locked, 

leaving Arthur stranded on the roof.  No-one was around, save for the milkman delivering to the hospital.  Arthur called out to him that he must 

be let out!  The milkman nodded wisely.  Arthur shouted he was the Professor of Psychiatry!  The milkman nodded even more wisely ... 

Arthur Hamilton Crisp was born on the 17th June 1930 in London.  It is to psychiatry’s inestimable gain, that he was deflected from his first career 

choice of engineering when he was hospitalized following an accident whilst playing rugby for the English Schoolboys XV1.  This early recognition 

that life-events can govern the expression of disease led to the study of medicine and subsequently psychiatry.  Although offered a place at The 

Maudsley and Institute of Psychiatry, he chose instead to train at St George’s.  I once asked him if he ever regretted his decision.  

He did not answer, his look said it all.

Arthur was a private person, but one who had a deep and well-thought out personal philosophy which drove his life at work and at play.  He fought 

his corner without rancour and was a powerful advocate for psychiatry, as it has found its place in modern medical practice.

A doctor, Arthur once said, is primarily a teacher.  Throughout most of his career, Arthur’s name was associated with undergraduate and postgraduate

medical education in Britain and continental Europe.  It was Arthur who integrated the examination of psychiatry into the Final Medical Examination of 

the University of London.  This led to his election as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University.  During his stewardship of the Education 

Committee of the General Medical Council, the medical curriculum acquired a broader base.  There was a firmer recognition that medicine had its roots

in sociology and psychology, as well as physiology and anatomy – concepts which now do not seem contentious, but were then.  Arthur Crisp united

his colleagues in a recognition that the modern doctor needed to draw deeply on a holistic understanding of the patient, encompassing mind, body and 

society; that in high-tech world, a doctor must retain core clinical skills and remain comfortable in an empathic relationship with the patient.  Arthur 

created an undergraduate psychiatric education programme at St George’s that was embarrassingly popular with students, reflected in the large 

percentage of St George’s students who went on to choose psychiatry as a career: a testament of his clinical example.

Arthur Crisp emphasised that psychiatry required the acquisition of a broad range of knowledge, skills and attitudes based on an eclectic mix of 

general and speciality experience.  Not for Arthur the dogmatic, limited preoccupations of sectarian psychiatry.  For him behavioural, psychodynamic 

and pharmacological approaches were equally relevant when based on a diagnostic interview which attempts to answer the question “why?” as well 

as “how”.  The week before he died he reprimanded me for curtailing my assessment interview to two hours, telling me firmly that three hours, if not four,

was required to fully understand the anorectic patient within the concept of her family.  How right he was!

The humanistic St George’s approach, developed by Arthur Crisp, in which psychiatrists must carefully define the social, biological and psychological 

features of a patient and be able to harness them in treatment, using pharmacology and a broad spectrum of psycho-therapies, had a profound 

influence on a generation of psychiatrists.  He took this work to the European Union when, as Chairman of the Committee of Medical Training, he 

laid down plans for Europe-wide medical postgraduate training which saw fruition in all the member countries.  

Arthur Crisp was Editor of the British Journal of Medical Psychology; Chairman of the London Professors of Psychiatry; Chairman of the GMC’s 

Education Committee; and Dean of the Medical Faculty of London University.  He was Visiting Professor in various universities including Harvard and 

Sydney; and external examiner in universities around the globe.  He was WHO Advisor on Medical Education and advised the Governments of China 

and of Japan.  During Arthur’s “retirement” he took on the massive brief for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, dealing with stigma as it pertains to 

psychiatric patients.  

He also became an accomplished sculptor, exhibiting his work, together with other members of his family.  His funeral last week - in the exquisitely 

beautiful church of St Mary in the village of Friston, in Suffolk, in the heart of what was Saxon England, and from which his family derived - was a 

warm, moving family affair.  The service was also attended by his contemporaries and students, many of whom have gone on to distinction.

Professor Arthur Crisp achieved high office and rightly so.  He was one of psychiatry’s great pioneer educationalists and certainly the one who brought 

psychiatry and psycho-logical ideas into the mainstream of medicine.  He was an international authority in his research field and diagnostic criteria for 

anorexia originally proposed by him have been incorporated into the two main systems of classification.

Arthur was a family-man and was supported by his wife Irene and their three sons.  His grandchildren were his special pleasure and to each on their fourteenth birthday he gave a framed copy of Polonius’s speech to Laertes in Hamlet.  In this speech Shakespeare gives much good advice and ends with the injunction: -  

This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Arthur, to your friends and colleagues, this is your epitaph.

Professor J Hubert Lacey

St George’s, University of London

Friendship for life…

About a quarter of a century ago, I first met Arthur Crisp at a psychosomatic research conference. My boss, Roland Pierloot, introduced me to him; they were sharing an interest in anorexia nervosa and I had read a lot of his publications. So I was eager to meet him but got disappointed because he appeared a bit distant and formal. He seemed the stereotypical “stiff” Englishman to me, but I loved the beautiful language he spoke in an “andante” way, so it was easy to understand for a non-english speaking audience. Over the next fifteen years we now and then met at conferences but never had a close contact; somehow that stereotyped image was hindering me. It all changed some ten years ago at a conference in San Marino, perhaps thanks to the Valpolicella wine or his wife Irene joining us at the banquet. We had a most wonderful evening and I almost collapsed in laughter when Arthur told his terrifying traveling story: with a few passengers sitting in a small American airplane he could hear the whole conversation between the two pilots; the one at the steering wheel was trying to land but had to repeat his manoeuvres while the other one, apparently the instructor, was shouting: “Come on, put that thing down”…  Ever since San Marino Arthur no longer was the stiff Londoner for me; we had most pleasant talks at every occasion and we started corresponding by email. Last year he did me an enormous favour – the childish thrill of a collector – by sending me the last original reprints of his early papers. In return I could surprise him with a Dutch translation of one of his papers he had never seen. In his last letter he mentioned the illness he was struggling with and he emphasized the strong support he got from his family. I’d sent him a postcard with Japanese characters expressing “friendship for life”… A few weeks later came the announcement of his death. Bye Arthur, I will keep our friendship alive by cherishing our memories.

Walter Vandereycken, Leuven (Belgium)

From Janet Treasure and Gerald Russell:

We are glad you invited us to provide short tributes on the occasion of Arthur’s death.

Gerald went to visit Arthur at home shortly before he died having been charged by the Eating Disorder Association (UK) to present him with their award for his outstanding contribution to the world of eating disorders. The occasion was a moving one as Arthur had been brought to a low state over the course of a few weeks by a cruel illness.

Gerald recalls a joint session with Arthur as recently as September 2005 at the European Council of Eating Disorders (ECED) meeting in Innsbruck. He had chosen as his main theme his Model of anorexia nervosa as a FLIGHT FROM GROWTH. He was at his most persuasive converting any of those in the audience who might have had doubts, whilst his wife Irene helped with the slide projector.

Janet particularly wants to acknowledge Arthur’s generosity in offering to combine his series of anorexic twins with those at the Maudsley. This created the first sizeable series of twins leading to the finding in 1984 of a part- genetic causation of anorexia nervosa. It was the forerunner of subsequent twin studies from the UK and from further afield.

We are saddened by Arthur’s death and shall miss him.

Gerald Russell and Janet Treasure

You might wish to look at some of Arthur Crisp's contributions to the ECED and you can do so at:

www.psyctc.org/eat_d/eced/nl_au95/ahcnews4.doc or check out Arthur's address to the Austrian Society on Eating Disorders (ASED) at: www.oeges.or.at