This paper was written while I was on my gap year in France. I think I had started it before setting out, but I remember editorial correspondence arriving in Caen, Normandy where I was working as an assistant de langue at L’institution Saint Joseph. The point of the paper is to suggest that the special piquancy of the minor triad is due to the interference frequencies of the tonic and minor third which, unlike those of the major third, are in remote dissonance with the other notes of the triad. The argument was based on pure tones in the untempered scale (sinusoidal waves without overtones) and I side-stepped the problem of how the effect of the minor third could come through music played in a tempered scale. I can’t answer this question now – perhaps the ear adjusts back to pure intervals. The Strad is still published. Has been for 125 yrs, now.

BACK to AFW in print

The book is up on Googlebooks. You can read without buying – at least the Intro and a chunk of Chapters 1 and 2…

Link to BWSG on Google Books

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I am a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. Is my profession therefore that of Medicine, Psychiatry, or Child and Adolescent Psychiatry?

That is where Being With and Saying Goodbye starts out from – from the fact of my professional identity and practice, but I chose to give the book the subtitle Cultivating Therapeutic Attitude in Professional Practice, rather than …in Child and Adolescent Mental Health because, not only was I confident that what I was saying would ring true for other, non-medical, professionals in that area of work, but I was also pretty certain that it would be of interest and relevant to other areas of professional practice – For example Teaching and Social Work as well as Mental Health, and Healthcare more generally.

So, if you are a teacher or a social worker – and not only for children – I hope that you will venture to read Being With and Saying Goodbye, and then comment on this blog.