When I was lecturing I would encourage my students to be promiscuous. To have as much sex as possible with as many people as possible. And, ideally, not to use any kind of contraception. This always raised a few eyebrows and got me some odd looks. What was I, as one who was a nursing lecturer doing, inviting such reckless behaviour? I would encourage my Mental Health students to visit their Adult colleagues. I would encourage my Mental Health students to read something other than ICD 10. I encouraged them to get into bed with Freud, Jung and Szasz. And to stay there until they knew they had conceived. I encouraged my Adult nursing students to look at the impact social policy had on the lives of their patients. That being poor renders you – or your children – susceptible to an array of illnesses that your more affluent neighbours will not be affected by. Illnesses like asthma, measles, pneumonia, AIDS, T.B.. The list is long. (Here again ‘The personal is political’.) And when they had had enough intercourse with other nurses, I would urge them to find an available Engineer who could teach them about Safe Working Loads, Destruction Testing and Shear Forces. All as applicable to Health as to Engineering. And so on. To quote from Brain Patten’s excellent poem, Prose Poem towards a Definition of Itself . (The “it” being poetry.)

“On sighting mathematicians it should unhook the algebra from their minds and replace it with poetry; on sighting poets it should unhook poetry from their minds and replace it with algebra.”

In my own way, this is what I wanted my students to do. To become intellectually promiscuous. I wanted to unhook all the TPR charts from the minds of my Adult students and replace it with Empathy. Equally I wanted to unhook Psychiatry from the minds of my Mental Health students and replace it with some anatomy and physiology.

Not much has changed. I left academic life some years ago to set up in private practice as a psychotherapist. Covid 19 notwithstanding, it was a good move. It took me out the combative ring of the blame game. “Why did this student fail your module?” or “Why do you use so few / so many slides in your Power Point presentations?” Skirmishes could run to many pages of assassination by email. For a time I was supervising students at Broadmoor. I always breathed a sigh of relief when I got there because I had to surrender my mobile phone at Reception. For two or three hours I was safe.

My first professional qualification was as a Teacher. I did R.E. or Div, as we called it (short for divinity). I was a passionate Evangelical in those days. “They shall not pass” was my watchword when it came to my studies. I adopted Billy Graham’s motto “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” I would not allow the infidel of biblical criticism any foothold. This gave rise to some interesting clashes in our lecture, which was a shame. Forty years on and I find much to like and admire in these “infidels”. Tillich, Buber, Freud, Bultmann and others now inform my thinking and my inner world. (Not to mention a therapist, an analyst and a Spiritual Director along the way.)

I’ll end with two quotes, both of which sum up all I’ve been trying to say in this blog. (Two because I can’t choose between them!)The first is from Kurt Vonnegut “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” (If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young.)

The second is from Picasso “Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.” (Pablo Picasso: Metamorphosis of the Human Form)