Updated: 17 January 2009
When I went up to Keele University in 1958 I took my bike - on the train. And in the train from Derby to Stoke-on-Trent I met a fellow student who remarked that going through the tunnel was very Freudian. To my knowledge that was the first time I’d heard the word Freudian, and had not the slightest idea what he was talking about. I lost touch with him quite soon, but did develop an interest in psychology. The first time I discovered it could “work” was during the year I spent in France in 1961. I found that quite a strain at first and noticed that I had developed a nervous twitch at the side of my mouth. In a bookshop I discovered “Les prodigieuses victoires de la psychologie moderne”, and since I was there to learn a lot of French I thought I might cure myself of the twitch while reading this rather thick book. And I did! I have no idea how it worked but it gave me a life-time interest in the effect of the mind on the body.
That was only a very amateur interest, along the lines of “self-improvement” and there are hundreds of books on the subject. In my 50’s, still interested in the mind-body connection, I decided to make a more serious study and embarked on a degree in the subject with the Open University. That in itself is a self-improvement project, involving early rising to study before work, late TV in order to see the special programmes, Saturdays given over to tutorials as well as some weekday evenings, and of course the marvellous summer schools. I had a week each in Norwich, Durham and Stirling and began to think that psychology was pretty good! Then my school decided it was time that there was a 6th form course and persuaded me to teach it, so it became work again.
That was only a very amateur interest, along the lines of “self-improvement” and there are hundreds of books on the subject. In my 50’s, still interested in the mind-body connection, I decided to make a more serious study and embarked on a degree in the subject with the Open University. That in itself is a self-improvement project, involving early rising to study before work, late TV in order to see the special programmes, Saturdays given over to tutorials as well as some weekday evenings, and of course the marvellous summer schools. I had a week each in Norwich, Durham and Stirling and began to think that psychology was pretty good! Then my school decided it was time that there was a 6th form course and persuaded me to teach it, so it became work again.
Freud
“The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” - just fascinating!
Irvin D. Yalom
“The Gift of Therapy” - lovely tales of clients and their strange problems.
M. Scott Peck
“The Road less travelled” - an uplifting masterpiece that I’ve read three times.
Joseph Murphy
“The Power of your Subconscious Mind” - helpful, readable, and deeper than it seems.
Eckhart Tolle
