Bluebird

This uplifting memoir is a meditation on mortality and the art of living. Exploring death, dying and the impact of life-threatening illness, it raises profound questions that provoke the reader to think about the omnipresence of death in life. It also foregrounds the life-affirming potential of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

This posthumous memoir by Andrew Cooper is the first book in the Tavistock Lives series. It traces connections between early experience and later physical and mental pain, and between personal fears about death and dying and the wider societal forces that shape our responses to them. It is also a rich exploration of the life-enhancing potential of psychoanalytic psychotherapy – which Andrew credits with saving his life. Psychotherapy takes its place alongside physical medicine, which enabled Andrew to overcome two episodes of cancer in his youth followed by further serious illnesses leading to hospitalisation and life-long medication. The book is at once a story of a life and an intelligent enquiry into lived experience. Andrew confronts the existential questions that haunt us all, reflecting on past encounters, revisiting long-held beliefs, and exploring the revelations of dreams.

Andrew inspired many throughout his professional life, and his final book does so again – this time on a more personal level. Bluebird sings a song of hope as it looks back on a long, good life. It is the ideal companion for those drawn to life stories and those seeking answers to life’s biggest questions.

About the author

About the editor

Series editors’ preface

Prelude: The pause

1. Journey’s end: Intensive care

2. Journey’s beginning: The rectory on the hill

3. Generational pasts: The unknown soldier

4. Loss and the reclamation of friendship

5. Belonging and place: ‘We’ll be back!’

6. Public service and public fears: Dead babies

7. Paternal love

8. Memento mori: Unbar the door

9. The capricious body

10. The dreaming mind: Lost and found

11. Mind and body links: The exploding water heater

12. And finally

References

• By (author) Andrew Cooper
• Edited by Heather Price