He spent more than two decades helping patients cope with the psychological toll of cancer -- and now, a leading Bristol psychologist is sharing what he's learned in a new book. Dr James Brennan worked at the Bristol Oncology Centre for over twenty-one years, supporting people through some of the toughest moments of their lives. Our reporter Emma chats with him to reflect on his career in the NHS -- and why he believes understanding the mind is just as vital as treating the body.
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00:00struggling in our own different ways and that's quite sort of reassuring to know
00:05we're all much the same really and people are basically good at heart okay
00:09well I'm dr. James Brennan I'm a clinical psychologist albeit I'm retired these
00:15days I've been retired a couple of years I've just released trains of thought a
00:19natural history of the mind which is an attempt to present and describe the mind
00:25for the general public for the general reader rather than for a specialist
00:29readership I've been a psychologist for nearly 45 years and I don't feel I've
00:34ever already read a book about the mind that so satisfactorily describes how it
00:39works that I felt that most people would be able to understand so that's what I've
00:44set out to do in this book so tell me a little bit about your career first and
00:49so you started in London you then moved to Bristol University and to the oncology
00:55center at the BRI here tell me a little bit about that and how it's got you to this point
00:59well I trained at the Institute of Psychiatry in London and following that I worked I was so
01:07impoverished with a huge student loan at the time that I had to work in the NHS which I was very
01:11pleased to work in because I'm a great believer of the NHS so I moved to Bristol and in fact the
01:16Bristol job turned out to be that I was probably the first clinical psychologist to be appointed to
01:20a full-time post in cancer I didn't know that at the time so there was a lot to learn and so as part
01:28of that job I also worked at the university as well teaching medical students and clinical psychology
01:33doctoral students as well. And illness has like a massive impact on family as well as the individual
01:41and friends and communities tell me a little bit about that and your work to to kind of understand that.
01:48Well I realized pretty quickly that as you say cancer affects not just the individual but
01:57their partners their family members and as you say friends as well so I quickly found myself
02:04interviewing and engaging the partner as well and and that became one of my research interests was
02:11actually working with couples. Women were very often disappointed with the lack of support they got
02:16from the male partners where that was rarely the case for men they would turn to their wives their
02:22sisters their mothers and get a great deal of support from them but they generally didn't turn to other
02:28men for that support whereas women would talk generally to other women and got their support from them and I
02:35thought that was very interesting so it was often about working with the family with it with the couple to help
02:42the man perhaps feel more comfortable staying with the emotion rather than just walking away from it or
02:48trying to make it all very positive which is the other thing that men are inclined to do try and fix it or
02:53be overly positive about the cancer which isn't always appropriate of course.
02:57So
03:02you