I am Alan Hancock. I have worked as a Social Worker, Childrens Home Manager and worked at a G.Ps surgery as a Counsellor as well as in private practice. I have been involved with many different therapies as a participant and as Group Leader working on myself and with others to improve our mental health. I am now retired and I think it is time to put my life's conclusions in writing.

I came out of my childhood unhappy with a conviction that there had to be something better for human beings. But what? I read Sigmund Freud at 18 and discovered a basic model of the human mind overlaid with complex theories that I couldn't quite fit together. Only to discover it wasn't me that had the problem but the fact that Freud had discovered something so disturbing to conventional thought that he felt compelled to hide it even from himself. The truth was that all his patients were permanently psychologically hurt in their childhood and many were sexually abused. He wrote a book about it and it drew such stinging rebukes from his colleagues that he invented the concept of infantile sexuality to explain it all away. It reinforced to the world the idea - "Don't blame parents it's all in the dark recesses of the mind". In fact he had already shown how it was the result of child abuse by parents and others. Every person who has demonstrated the same truth has been regarded by society as a maverick or crackpot. However gradually the truth is being accepted but it is still only on the edges that it is fully acknowledged. One day it will be the accepted truth that we all have suffered in our childhood and need to deal with it to find a basic peace of mind.

Read on further and you will find how you can discover and work with your own abuse. It is a way that is not easy but then what happened to us as a children was so unpleasant that dealing with it will be correspondingly difficult, but rewarding in a way that nothing else can be. If you want an easy way then look elsewhere ( Spoiler alert - They don't work ). It is a life's work to find out who we really are, but what else would you want to do?

I have drawn attention to some great pioneers who have helped bring us nearer to the truth. I have blended their ideas to give, I hope, a total picture.