Peter J. Tyrer

Peter Tyrer was born in 1940 during the Battle of Britain and sometimes seems to have been in combat ever since, even though he thinks he is a friendly sort of soul. He is an active community psychiatrist currently working for a charity concerned with nidotherapy (NIDUS-UK), is a researcher with over 600 publications, 18 in The Lancet), doubling up as a not-very-read novelist, dramatist, and librettist, and has the advantage of being an identical twin, so he can blame his doppelgänger when things go wrong. in the past he was gardener to Spike Milligan, leader of a botanical expedition to Africa, editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, and a left wing soccer player, indicating his politics. He also understands suffering, having supported Sheffield Wednesday Football Club since the age of five. He also courts controversy, quite unintentionally, by his interest in two subjects where pessimism has been rife, hypochondriasis and personality disorder, often thought of as no-go untreatable areas. By helping to describe their features more accurately, new treatments have been developed that are highly effective. He is particularly interested in both fictional accounts that illustrate personality problems as well as developing and describing how important is personality in the field of mental illness. Understanding personality helps to improve the performance of health professionals involved in treating mental illness; it reinforces and changes from a two to a three dimensional subject once you combine all these skills. He is also very keen on removing stigma from the term and getting rid of the toxic term 'borderline', a Pandora's box of nonsense that leads to swirling invective and anger. It may take a generation or two to accept other forms of personality problems as intrinsic to all but by burying the subject under six feet of politically correct soil will not solve anything, and any other term would become equally stigmatised in the current climate. He is also at the forefront of developing treatments for personality disorder, not treatments in the formal sense, but ones that accommodate personality variance instead of suppressing it and wiping out its positives.

If you decide to follow his work you will be pleasantly surprised, but do not jump to premature conclusions.