Truth or Perception

Christine Retson was born at the end of the 1939-45 war. As a psychotherapist she had met many people who bring to her anguish, anger and fear. They walk into her life and then walk out again having gained positivity and inner calmness from meeting her. Her own story paints a picture of the distress that her parent's generation coped with in times of stiff upper lips and religious patriarchy.

Without choice she became a victim of society's bewilderment, its fear and mental illness, and was mostly comforted by oral means such as cigarettes and alcohol. There was no one to understand the child's fear of her psychosomatic symptoms. Survival was her only means of attack and protection. Every night she would pray to her God to let her live another day, fearing that she had some terrible illness and was going to die. Through visits to her local library as a troubled teenager, her interest in behavioural science grew. She read how some illnesses not visibly seen were given no comfort or empathy through ignorance and lack of medical knowledge. Then a miracle happened. In the 1970s two men were to walk into her life and change it forever. For the first time she was understood, comforted and loved.

Within eight months both were to leave her. She was again confused, bewildered and frightened, but now she knew what living was all about and she had freedom from fear. She tried to hold on to what they had unlocked within her, and walked with courage onward to the still unknown challenges that awaited her.