On Practicing Therapy at 1:45 A.M.

In July of 2004, I became the Resident Psychotherapist for B.B.C. Radio 2, the most popular radio station in Great Britain, which attracts approximately 15,000,000 listeners weekly from all parts of the British Isles. Some four months earlier, Lesley Douglas, the forward-thinking and visionary new Controller of Radio 2, had invited me for a breakfast meeting atop St. George's Hotel on Langham Place, near her offices at Broadcasting House, to discuss possibilities for bringing good psychological and psychotherapeutic ideas onto the radio. As we munched on delicious croissants, Lesley told me that as the new Controller she hoped not only to maintain and indeed expand upon the high quality of Radio 2's current music and arts programs, but also that she wished to find a way for Radio 2 to help foster a greater sense of well-being and “citizenship” in Britain, and she wondered whether a mental-health professional might be able to make a contribution to the network. I had made my first radio broadcast some twenty years earlier, in 1984, back on the “Dave Freeman” radio program on B.B.C. Radio Oxford, defending psychoanalysis against heated attacks from Professor Hans Eysenck; and in the intervening decades, I had accumulated a goodly amount of broadcasting experience. I applauded Lesley Douglas on her very exciting proposal, and shortly thereafter I met her senior colleague Dave Barber and his “Social Action” team, Senior Producer Mark Hill, and Broadcast Assistant Nicky Davidson. Within a matter of months, we had created the infrastructure for a nationwide