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To begin with I'll say how I came to be associated with Ronnie Laing and the Philadelphia Association. I had trained in the phenomenological or Continental philosophical tradition at Penn State, completing my doctoral dissertation on Martin Heidegger's theory of language in 1967. Al Lingus, who would become translator of Levinas into English, joined the Penn State faculty that year and introduced me to the work of Emmanuel Levinas and his ethical critique of Heidegger. In 1972 I spent a sabbatical year with Laing and the Philadelphia Association (PA), hoping to close the gap I felt between the world of ideas that I had been studying and teaching and the lived truth of these ideas, which I believed ought to be embodied in a lost art of philosophical practice for which I was searching. I thought that the messenger should become the message, yet the scholastic approach of academics did not lead to wisdom. As I saw it, academics did not radiate fulfillment, serenity, or goodness. At the PA I began to hear the music of the heart.
I returned to London in 1974 to train in phenomenological psychotherapy and become a member of a PA asylum community. In time I became a psychotherapist as well as a colleague and friend of Ronnie Laing's. Over some years we met on a regular basis for congenial afternoon conversations and evening