Why My Mother Went Away

Alan Kennedy was a war baby, spending his early years in the Midlands of England, one of three brothers, never far from German bombs. Finding the science subjects he had studied at school would not permit him to achieve his ambition to study English literature at university, he enrolled, almost by accident, for a course in what was then the relatively obscure discipline of ＂psychology＂. When he retired in 2010 - no longer an ＂accidental psychologist＂ - Alan Kennedy’s association with the discipline defined a distinguished career stretching back almost fifty years. Serving under no less than nine Principals, the department he helped found in the university of Dundee, played a leading part in defining the study of language as a dominant intellectual force in contemporary psychology. This absorbing memoir charts the years which led to this decision, years in which he battled war-time deprivations, illness, and the consequences of his mother’s epilepsy, a disease which came to have its own very particular personal relevance.