Sunday, November 15, 2009

'Cockney Kid: The Making of an Uncoventional Psychologist'

Photo shows Honourable Hugh Templeton launching 'Cockney Kid: The Making of an Uncoventional Psychologist', the memoirs of Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Victoria University Tony Taylor.
Launched today (Nov.15, 2009) at Kapiti's Mediterranean Warehouse with its famed Sicilian olives, hams, cheeses and Italian wines, the owner had barely enough seats for over 200 guests.
'This has to be one of the biggest book launches I have been to,' said Silver Owl Press publisher David McGill. 'Several of his former students were among the speakers from the floor paying tribute to his influence on them. Indeed, MC Ian Johnstone, the veteran broadcaster, said it was only the throw of the dice and our good fortune Tony Taylor did not end up a Vice-Admiral or senior clergyman. Clearly he has touched many lives. Gratifyingly, most of the guests bought a copy of the book.'

It is an extraordinary story of a cockney kid who grew up on the eve of the Second World War in Dickensian conditions in London's Docklands, took up sea scouts, joined the navy in time to see war service, and then became a probation officer. The first half of the book is his vivid portrait of an Artful Dodger who chose to take up the study and not the practise of crime, depicting the teeming street life with wit and verve, exploring with painful candour his difficult relationships with those closest to him.

Emigrating to New Zealand, he did ground-breaking research on the meaning and motivation of male and female prison tattoos. An adventurer in body and spirit, he counselled rescue workers in the Erebus disaster, going on to other original research into wind phobia, cyclone victim counselling in the Pacific, his travels taking him to Berkeley campus during the student riots of the sixties, Tianamen Square in the student protests.

His memoirs are illustrated by over 100 of his photographs, including a pensive Joan Baez at Berkeley after damping down a riot, student hunger protest in Tianamen Square, concentration camp art, hermaphroditic statues in Britain, John Lennon's houseboat and the signatures of The Beatles in his 1964 Wellington study of how they induced adolescent hysteria. This 84-year-old psychologist is still active in a profession where he has published 300 international publications as diverse as the sigificance of 'darls' or special relationships for Borstal girls; medical, legal and social implications of transsexualism; suicide; Antarctic psychology; disaster stress. Recently Professor Taylor was quoted in the newspaper on the behaviour of the man who abused the two female bodies he buried under his house.

The 337-page book retails for $44-95 in bookshops or direct from the publisher.

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