On becoming more open to others in God: Asperger syndrome and the Enneagram

About the Book

What we are and may become as persons, Dr Nutting contends, is precisely our relationships. He challenges a long-term mindset endemic in psychiatry and psychology, namely, the presumption to label deviations from statistical ‘norms’ as pathology. Key to recovery from psychiatric diagnosis trauma, he argues, is truly respectful human relationships. Nutting himself was assigned ‘Asperger`s Syndrome’. A way of understanding personality in relationships is the Enneagram, an analytic spiritual psychology model, still controversial whilst growing in influence. Here its power to elucidate the dynamics of difficult and healing relationships is tested against the author`s seventy-odd years` life-experience as child, adult, patient, psychiatric chaplain and academic.

About the Author

Raised in England, Geoffrey Nutting was educated in musicology at Durham University and theology at Oxford University. A promising career as musicology academician in Nigeria, then Australia, was cut short. Sinking into ‘bi-polar depression’, he retreated to calmer work: rare book cataloguing. Sudden recovery and intensive reskilling facilitated his continuing life focus and third career: academic mental health research and practical pastoral care. He renews frequently through deep peace at a Cistercian monastery. From his first thirty-year marriage, Geoff has two children and four grandchildren. He, and his later wife of sixteen years, share in performing chamber music and in befriending marginalized people.