Anne Kearney's ground-breaking book on class in counselling and its invisibility within the training curriculum and the counselling relationship is reissued here with new commentaries from practitioners, clients and educationalists writing today.
"This is an incomplete account of the life of my brother, Philip James Nilon, who was born with a clotting factor disease known as Haemophilia. The disease has famously afflicted some of the royal families of Europe, particularly the Russian and one of Queen Victoria`s sons. The time is set from the nineteen forties, through to the eighties, that is to say from Philip`s childhood through to adulthood. It describes a boy of immense determination and stubbornness who makes daily allies of deception and denial. He is swept repeatedly into situations of near death, but the anxiety accompanying these times falls on those closest to him.He is cavalier about life, risk and annihiliation, while amazingly courageous about pain and loss.Swinging between humour and apparent naivety, the story outlines a trajectory of fear, crisis and human inadequacy, but is subtly underscored by something more than loss."