In this issue of the News Bulletin we bring a presentation and an interview with John Merchant by Stephen Garratt. Please enjoy the presentation and interview below.

John Merchant trained first as a scientist — his undergraduate degree from the University of Sydney combined Psychology with Zoology — and the tension between those disciplines, between the biological and the psychic, has animated his work ever since. His earliest professional instinct was clinical.

After graduating he spent several years in residential programs often involving young people struggling with drugs, alcohol and mental health issues, and then undertook fieldwork in Illinois with the GROW movement, an Australian-founded self-help organisation for people recovering from mental illness. These were formative encounters with psychological suffering in its most unmediated form, and they gave him a practical grounding that would later distinguish his approach to both theory and the consulting room….

Click HERE to read a biographical overview of John Merchant by Stephen Garratt
And Click HERE to read the full interview of John Merchant by Stephen Garratt.