Bestselling author and psychologist Tony Bates has spent his career seeking to understand the lives of others. Here he turns his therapeutic eye on himself and describes the events and people in his own life that have made him the insightful thinker and teacher that he is today. 

He recalls traumatic events in his childhood that reverberated throughout his life and how, with therapy and time, he was eventually able to heal. He recounts the stories of the patients that affected him most deeply and informed both the direction of his work and his philosophy as a psychologist.

Dr Tony Bates is a Clinical Psychologist and was Head of Psychology for 30 years at St James’s Hospital, Dublin. He trained as a mindfulness teacher in 2001 and founded Jigsaw in 2006. Tony now lives on a cliff outside North Sligo. He is married to Ursula, father of three and grandfather of five.