James Bennett

James Bennett was born in 1949 and grew up in Kent in the UK in a small village with a working forge on the edge of the North Downs. After surviving the indignities of a British private education, the best part of which was to instill in him a lifelong love of words and poetry, and thinking outside the box, he ended up studying English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge in the turbulent and mind-expanding late 1960's. During these years, apart from reading novels and poetry and trying to write his own poems, he became exposed to Buddhist meditation and developed an interest in Jungian Psychology and Sufism, the latter leading him, after graduating with an English degree, to travel to the Glastonbury Fayre in 1971 to attend the music and spirituality festival, which was recorded by Nicholas Roeg in his documentary of that seminal event.

A fateful meeting round a campfire led to an invitation to move to Edinburgh, Scotland in order to run a small meditation and mystical study centre in some friends' apartment. This move in turn prompted an introduction to Dr Winifred Rushforth , who was a pioneer in running dream groups and who combined a Jungian perspective with an eclectic spirituality. Through his connection to and work with her, and a network of interesting people from varied backgrounds, yet united in their concern about the interface between psychology and spirituality, he became part of a group of people who opened a place called the Salisbury Centre in a large Georgian house in Edinburgh, which still functions as a centre today. The Centre offered meditation, yoga and tai chi, crafts, including a pottery and weaving, dream groups and study of mystical writings from the world religions.

After living as a resident for 18 months in the small community that ran the Centre, it gradually dawned on Bennett that his future path lay in becoming a psychotherapist and he was advised that he needed to have a solid background in one of the helping professions in order to make this possible, and so he entered a two year intensive Social Work graduate program at Edinburgh University from 1974-1976. Upon graduating he worked as a social worker in a community regional office outside the city of Edinburgh and subsequently as a psychiatric social worker in a busy admissions team as well as providing outreach to the surrounding community.

By 1982 Bennett felt ready for a change. While working as a social worker he had not only been training in family systems therapy and other modalities, but he had also been pursuing his own therapy, initially in a psychodynamic framework and eventually in various forms of the then burgeoning human potential movement alive at that time. He became interested in training in Gestalt Therapy and joined a certificate training program while working at the psychiatric hospital. Now the thought occurred to take a break from social work and embark on further Gestalt Therapy training in the USA as a sabbatical, with a plan to return to the UK and Scotland after a year or two and work as a psychotherapist.

However life had other plans for him, as he ended up meeting his wife Judy during the

training, which took place outside Boston, Massachusetts. Needing to find gainful employment upon getting married and lacking the necessary credentials to practice here independently, he found a job at an Addictions Treatment Centre where he worked for seven years, during which time he sat and passed the independent practitioner licensing exam for Massachusetts. Outside of office hours, he developed a small private practice, eventually leaving the agency to work for himself full time as a psychotherapist, and at the same time he also became a father to a baby girl Rachel.

During this stage he had maintained a passionate interest in dreams, mythology, eco-psychology and archetypal psychology and male psychology and attended workshops with Bly, Meade and Hillman during the years of the Men's Movement, and read widely in these fields. His writing emerged from the disparate experiences of a searching life, in an attempt to understand his and our place in the wider universe we are a part of.

He lives with his wife in Arlington Massachusetts, which is also where his psychotherapy practice is located. His interests include hiking and birding, hand drumming, cooking and listening to music and his own and other people's dreams.