The Writings of Ivor Browne: Steps along the road-the evolution of a slow learner

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THE WRITINGS OF IVOR BROWNE STEPS ALONG THE ROAD: THE EVOLUTION OF A SLOW LEARNER www.corkuniversitypress.com Cover photograph: Jack Ledwidge Cover: Burns Design Ivor Browne is a great psychiatrist and an original thinker.These eloquent and searching essays chart the progress of his mind as he sought to find new ways not only to heal his patients, but to work out a better way for the society around them to progress. They are important documents because they display a single mind developing ideas over half a century; they are a vital contribution to the history of psychiatry in our time. COLM TÓIBÍN Ivor Browne, both personally and professionally, stands for compassion, accessibility, innovation, respect for others, and above all, independent thinking. This collection of essays and other writings gives us a clear chronological insight into the development of that thinking, the challenges he encountered, and the resulting profound changes in himself and those he influenced over a period of fifty years. It is an invaluable guide to the formation of one of the most remarkable people in Ireland. CATRIONA CROWE Head of Special Projects, National Archives of Ireland Compassionate and compelling, Ivor Browne's voice is as incisive as it is unique.This compendium of extraordinary papers and essays reflects more than five decades of research, reflection and clinical practice. It documents and explores Professor Browne's life-long journey of scientific enquiry, therapeutic evolution and personal development, and is an excellent companion volume to the equally impressive ‘Music and Madness’. The Irish intellectual landscape contains very few thinkers who can match his intoxicating combination of scientific method, intellectual rigour and willingness to evolve in his thinking over the course of his remarkable career. DR BRENDAN KELLY Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry, University College Dublin As a final year medical student with Ivor Browne in the late 1980s, I greedily purloined many of these papers from his (always open!) office and still have the dog-eared, underlined copies in a large lever arch file marked ‘Ivor’. I knew then, as now, that these writings were not just the reflections of a learned man, but urgent messages. How we relate to suffering, both our own and that of others, is one of the great challenges of being a human being.These papers starkly illustrate how removed Irish society, and the modern world in general, has become from this theme. Listen to this man! Join him in understanding that we must redefine our relationship with many things: pills that numb us, professionals that ‘fix’ us, avoidance of pain at all costs, turning our back on our suffering and that of others.That we need to examine the continuing role of institutions we have created, both nationally and internationally. Never angry or hopeless, often humorous, almost always offering a (albeit often radical!) solution, these writings are those of a wise and gentle giant. DR MALCOLM GARLAND Consultant Psychiatrist, Dublin North Mental Health Services and Senior Lecturer, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland 9 781855 942196 ISBN 978-1-85594-219-6 ...