ABSTRACT
Desmond, when I first met him, was an adult student of mine on an unconventional course I was running at the so-called ‘Working Men’s College’ in North London in 1985. The course was unusual: it was called ‘Supernormal Psychology’(!) and was basically an antidote, rather as this book is, to the emphasis on the abnormal in psychology (see also Maslow 1968, 1971, 1973 on this). The first time I remember him speaking up in class was in a lecture I gave on some aspects of humour. Rather contrary to the spirit of the course I argued that, according to some views, comedians should be neurotic (and perhaps underneath it all, angry), both statements with which he heartily concurred. Perhaps it also was something about the way he spoke and the spontaneity of his agreement but he had a penetrating effect. I did not know at the time that he had been a professional comedian himself spotted in The Melody Maker at the same time as the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan(!). But none the less I felt: ‘This is a man who knows himself.’
