ABSTRACT
In the late twentieth century there seems to be a resurgence of interest in the kind of intuitive feeling and understanding that the author believe most psychotherapists need, a so-called 'feminine' way of knowing. The author see his own personal desire to become a psychotherapist and in particular a feminist psychotherapist as part of the historical swing. He arrived in the world just after the Second World War into a period of optimism and the growth of equal opportunities encouraged by such events as the creation of the welfare state in Britain. The author considers his own real family and its effects on his 'becoming a psychotherapist'. Through reading he 'discovered' psychotherapists like Erich Fromm and Wilheim Reich who combined an understanding of the 'inner' world with a radical political understanding of the effects of society on people. His mother, who had been at Oxford University during the war, gave up teaching to become a full-time mother.
