I met Jenny at a critical time in my life. I had struggled for years with my mental health.

I was fortunate to be taken to the therapeutic community by my therapist to meet Jenny. My therapist told me that I said, “If I stay here, I will get well.” I have no recollection of saying it. Staying was challenging. I ran away many times at the start but always went back.

Jenny and the community created a safe space. It was not an easy space.

I frequently asked Jenny, “What do I need to do to get well?” She said, “If you stay here, you will get well.” For many months, I had no idea what she meant until I was willing to trust this was a safe place and a home that offered belonging and acceptance—something I yearned for.

Jenny was a safe person. She was around most days, joining us for lunch and for celebrations where there was always ice cream, which Jenny loved.

I have many stories about Jenny but want to recount and honor the work she did.

In 1980, Jenny took a sabbatical from her role as a psychologist in the prison service and went to India, where a new therapeutic community was being set up in Bangalore using Transactional Analysis (TA). While in India, Jenny decided to leave the prison service and complete her training in TA. She was drawn to this model of support that sought to truly understand the drivers of human behavior and offer people effective and long-lasting tools to positively change their lives.

The time she spent in India was pivotal and would change the direction of Jenny’s life—not just professionally, but also through the deep and long-standing relationships she made, including with Debra, Usha, Hank, and Dale, to name but a few who stayed with her all her life. It was while in India that she met Jacqui Schiff, one of the early transactional analysts, best known for developing the ‘reparenting’ method.

After I left the community, I started TA training and wanted to understand more about the community and reparenting. This is an excerpt from my 2021 article in the Transactional Analysis Journal (Mountain, 2022):

Jenny Robinson, a psychologist and Certified Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy), practiced reparenting in its strictest sense. She talked with me about how the community in the United Kingdom evolved, beginning in December 1987. Schiff was involved in the early planning as a consultant. The community as it was in 2003 when I was a resident was the result of an important and fundamental disagreement and consequent parting of the ways between Schiff and Jenny as its manager. Robinson was committed to the original theory of discounting, passivity, and symbiosis developed by Schiff and the early Cathexis group (J. L. Schiff, 1975; A. W. Schiff & J. L. Schiff, 1971) but found herself unable to subscribe to the working methods then being used by Schiff. Given that discounted, intense feelings, particularly fear, are usually at the core end of psychotic problems, Schiff believed it necessary to replicate in here-and-now situations a corresponding intensity before useful communication could take place. While it is true that resolution of psychosis is often achieved by a cathartic reliving of early intensity, Jenny could not subscribe to methods which resulted in the creation of fear in the everyday context of community living (Rawson, 2006, p. 81).

Instead, Robinson, along with her co-director David Rawson, developed a methodology within the agreed TA Code of Ethics: “In the community we have developed the intrinsic elegance and ongoing usefulness of the core Cathexis theory on frame of reference, discounting, passivity and symbiosis and have developed our own methodology and practice” (Rawson, 2006, p. 100).

Jenny was a special person: kind, compassionate, and passionate about what she did. To understand more about the work Jenny did, I encourage people to read her articles on reparenting (Robinson, 1998) and group dynamics (Robinson, 2003) in a therapeutic community.