About the Author
Colin Kirkwood is a son of the manse who grew up in Caithness, Galloway and Ayrshire. He studied at Ardrossan Academy, the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh and the Scottish Institute of Human Relations. He describes himself as a Scotttish generalist, with interests in literature and the arts (especially poetry), moral philosophy, education, politics and society, religion and relational psychotherapy.
His working life has been spent in adult and workers education, community action, in counselling and psychotherapy and supervising fellow practitioners.
More than anything else, he cares about what people say and do for themselves and with others. He holds that continuing to work at knowing ourselves, others, cultures and worlds is one of our lifelong tasks. He dislikes the idea of intellectual property, arguing that all knowledge is a common inheritance to be freely shared. He is suspicious of hierarchical institutions, particularly when they become self-serving. With Paulo Freire, he shares a commitment to love, dialogue and fundamental democratization, no matter how difficult they can be.
He has worked as Area Principal for Adult Education in North-east Derbyshire (1969â1972), and as Tutor Organiser and later District Secretary with the Workers Educational Association in South-east Scotland (1976â1986). He taught the Community Education core course at Edinburgh University (1986â1992) and was Head of the postgraduate programme of Counselling Studies at Moray House School of Education of the University of Edinburgh (1994â2004). He became Senior Psychotherapist at Huntercombe Hospital in West Lothian, where he worked with girls and woman with severe eating difficulties (2004â2009). He continues to offer supervision from home.
He has written six books and about fifty papers and lectures, some of which are listed at the end of this book.