While living in Liverpool in the1970s I was involved in work with the Community Relations Council, Great Georges Community Arts Project (for black youngsters), and with the foundation of the emerging co-operative housing movement. I travelled the country talking to community groups and lecturing to politicians and architects.

In 1979 I joined Mensa and this, together with my first redundancy in 1981 not only introduced me to a new circle of friends, but inspired me to start taking an Open University degree course. Initially I studied technology, but the requirement to study a second foundation course propelled me into the social sciences, and I found the psychology modules particularly interesting. I decided to follow the British Psychological Society degree profile, which I completed in 1990.

Open University courses require complete dedication, thesupport of family and friends and a great deal of hard work and study. Towards the end of my time with the OU I tried to give back something of what I had taken out by becoming a Students Association representative, and a summer school helper, and the latter role projected me straight into an involuntary counselling role; students at summer school seem to go slightly crazy, in a new environment, with no-one they know, they tend to behave atypically, and a lot of emotion is spilled.

I also became involved with the Open University Psychological Society, and from this Istarted, through Mensa, to run a series of residential weekends teaching Stress Management,Change Management, Hypnosis and NLP, Counselling Skills, Touch for Health and Massage.In between OU courses I studied and passed the Radio Amateurs Examination, qualified inBasic Applied Kinesiology as a Touch for Health practitioner, and obtained an ITECcertificate in practical and theoretical anatomy, physiology and massage.

While studying social psychology I became particularly interested in Carl Rogers' personcentred counselling with its optimistic view of the human being. At the time it was developedit constituted a radical departure from the accepted analytical methods and rapidly gainedprominence. The core conditions of empathy, acceptance and congruence still apply todayand both clients and counsellors become involved in a trusting, caring relationship characterised by power-sharing and mutuality. Until the advent of co-counselling this was theonly approach in which client and counsellor were seen as starting from the same base.%7F

The Open University course "Biology, Brain and Behaviour" emphasised the link betweenhuman and animal development, and also introduced the socio-biological argument, used asan excuse by some males for their anti-social behaviour.

One major influence on my studies was the course "The Changing Experience of Women". A link to women's resourcesOnce I overcame the initial reluctance of the tutors to having a man on the course I becamevery involved, and found it an mind-broadening experience. It ought to be a compulsorysubject for all male students. At the end of the course I went to India for four weeks to studyat the Institute of Psychology in Pune, andthen to travel round southern India studying family life.

Perhaps the most interesting, and intensive course that I took was a fourth level guided studycourse entitled "Perspectives in Family Studies" which introduced me to four majorperspectives on 'the family' - psychodynamic, systemic, 'mainstream' sociological andfeminist - and to major critiques of them. It also extended the work I had done in "Personality,Development and Learning" on the family 'life-cycle'; the perspectives of Foucault andDonzelot; recent research studies of families by feminists and ethnographers; debatesbetween feminists and the New Right and topics in social policy such as divorce andremarriage or family violence.

A primary orientation of the course was towards 'problems', problems within families, andproblems which 'the family' constitutes or aims to solve for the social order or for the peoplewho are its members. It focussed on the relative isolation of the nuclear family of Western industrial societies and its variants.

A further topic area of considerable importance is religion; the assumptions and expectationsabout what is natural, normal and proper in family life vary from culture to culture in waysclosely associated with dominant religious orientation (and even within cultures - theprotestant and catholic views of family and sexuality within Europe, for instance).

Therapists of various theoretical positions - Freudians, Jungians, behaviourists, humanists,etc - found that despite their efforts their clients were often resistant to change. Freud, ofcourse, had much to say about the phenomenon of resistance, but a further vitally importantfact was noticed by researchers such as Gregory Bateson and therapists such as DonJackson: where a patient started to show improvement in symptoms, often a personimmediately involved with him or her such as a husband or wife, child or parent would showsome deterioration. This demonstrated that individuals could not simply be conceptualised inisolation from their social contexts, and it brought about an awareness that social groups, andespecially natural groups such as families, needed to be studied in their own right.

Other areas I studied included Freud and psychodynamics, Sociological and feministperspectives, Systems perspective, Freud, sexuality and motherhood, the Family Life-cycle,Foucault and the analysis of discourse, Empirical work by ethnographers and feminists,Feminist versus New Right perspectives, Historical perspectives, Social anthropology,Family break-up and reformation, Family violence.

For this one course alone I read over twenty books plus the following nine titles:

• Bernard, The Future of Marriage,
• Brown and Harris, Social Origins of Depression,
• Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering,
• Donzelot, The Policing of Families,
• Gallop, Feminism and Psychoanalysis,
• Morgan, The Family, Politics and Social Theory,
• Palazzoli, Self-starvation,
• Watzlawick, Change,
• Bateson, Naven.

My final dissertation was on anorexia nervosa and eating disorders, based on the Palazzolibook and personal correspondence with members of an anorexia research association.