Brian Thorne is unusual in having maintained throughout a long and distinguished career a passionate commitment both to the theory and practice of person-centred therapy and to membership of the Anglican Church.This dual allegiance has earned him many friends and not a few detractors in both camps. His autobiography reveals a complex personality who grew up during the years of the Second World War and was later to see active service in the British Army during the Eoka campaign in Cyprus. We read of the experiences of the butcher’s assistant’s son who found himself at a public school and then at Cambridge. We meet the linguist who became a schoolmaster only for his true vocation to lead him to the emerging profession of counselling and psychotherapy. We are taken back to the years prior to the founding of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and to Thorne’s pioneering days at Keele University and then as the first Director of the Counselling Service at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The final chapter provides a moving account of what it has meant for Thorne to experience – and survive – major heart surgery.

 

Chapter 1 Early encounters, human and divine Chapter

2 The public schoolboy: Clifton College Chapter

3 The European traveller Chapter

4 Love’s island: national service Chapter

5 The student: Cambridge and Bristol Chapter

6 The schoolmaster: Eastbourne College Chapter

7 Becoming a therapist: Reading and Keele Chapter

8 Norwich and UEA: the first ten years Chapter

9 The broader canvas Chapter

10 Writing, scheming, relinquishing Chapter

11 Family and friendship Chapter

12 The heart’s surrender

Appendix 1 John Elliott’s address at the conferment of the title of Emeritus Professor

Appendix 2 Publications: 1966–2004

 

 

What makes someone like Brian Thorne tick? That was the question to which I was hoping to glimpse an answer when I picked up this tantalising book. When I put it down again, I felt as if I had made a new friend. I would venture to say that there is a personal quality – an intimacy – to much of Brian's academic writing, but this, the story of his own life, takes that intimacy one step further. His honesty, openness and, above all, his very prevalent and delicious sense of humour cannot fail to endear the reader to this remarkable and inspiring man. … Brian Thorne may not be Rimbaud or Goethe, but nonetheless this joyous insight into the life and soul of a key figure in British therapy had a similar effect on me. It created the hope in me that many, many more non-academic, personal, humanistic texts can find their way into the developmental syllabi of person-centred practitioners. To allow oneself to be met as a person as Brian has done in Love's Embrace represents a modelling of the person-centred approach of the very highest order.

Yvonne Bates, Ipnosis Number 20, 2005