Against All Gods

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the light of what he has written here, Dr Clark is rather ambivalent about his early history of having been a son of the manse, caught between religious orthodoxy and his natural inclinations. Brought up in the north of Scotland and educated at Banff Academy and Aberdeen University, he retired as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist after nearly 40 years in the NHS and followed that in 1990 with six years in part-time private practice and writing his other books. Now, after several years more than his sell-by date, he looks back on a varied but intereting and reasonably successful career. After a period of National Service in the RAF (from AC2 to Fying Officer) which provided the material for his 2006 book Stand by your Beds!, he worked first as an industrial psychologist at Leicester Industrial Rehabilitation Unit before becoming a clinical psychologist in the NHS, also in Leicester. He has taught and researched at the universities of Leicester and Aberdeen in the course of his work within a number of large NHS hospitals. He returned to Scotland in 1966 to take up a Consultant post in the Grampian Regional Hospital Board, eventually retiring as the Director of Grampian Health Board's Area Clinical Psychology Services and Hon. Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Dept. of Mental Health at Aberdeen University Medical School. For his work in that context he was honoured with the OBE in 1990, and having been active in one or another form of public service formost of his life, was appointed by the Queen as a Deputy Lieutenant of Banffshire in 1992. He was appointed as an Hon. Sheriff of Grampian and Highlands and Islands Sheriffdom and has sat on the bench at Banff for more than thirty-five years. In parallel with that he has been both a Children's Panel member and a Safeguarder in the Scottish juvenile justice system for 30 years. In his earlier life he has been a Town and County Councillor of Banff and Banffshire for nine years as an Independent. He has been a short term Consultant for the WHO in Sri Lanka and has also been invited to lecture on his research in India, Canada and twice to the USA. He is the author of a small collection of occasional papers and several more substantial chapters (at least one of over 100 pages) in academic texts as well as over 30 published professional articles in peer reviewed journals. Latterly he took to writing magazine articles and books--somewhat more hectically--as he is having to cope with increasing blindness which has already put paid to his painting and drawing, photography, playing music and, of course, reading. He depends more and more on his Kindle, computer and audiobooks. He lives with his wife of 65 years and has two daughters, two sons in law, four grandchildren and one great grand daughter, all of whom have afforded him his greatest pride and pleasure.