ABSTRACT
The research agenda of the psychopathological effects of negative life events and family negativity was, to a very considerable extent, set by George Brown and his colleagues during the 1960s and 1970s (Brown, 1972; Brown, Sklair, Harris and Birley, 1973; Brown, Harris and Peto, 1973). Of course, an interest in these topics, and a concern over their effects, goes back a very long way. What marks out George’s contribution as providing a quantum leap ahead is the way in which he took the topic and systematically set about determining what research was needed in order to test the rather inchoate, but important, ideas then prevailing about the possible role of life stresses and adversities in the origins and course of mental disorder. George would undoubtedly claim that he set about this task from the perspective of medical sociology but, in actuality, what he did cannot sensibly be reduced to the concepts and methods of one discipline.
