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Whither Goeth the World - Humanity or Barbarity? The Life Work of Dr. Neville T. Yeomans
Email: lspencre@alphalink.com.au Two
Poems Written by Dr. Neville Thomas Yeomans
The Inma There
seems to be a new spirituality going around - or a philosophy – or is it an
ethical and moral movement, or a feeling? Anyway,
this Inma religion or whatever it is – what does it believe in? It
believes in the coming-together, the inflow of alternative human energy, from
all over the world. It
believes in an ingathering and a nexus of human persons values, feelings,
ideas and actions. Inma
believes in the creativity of this gathering together and this connexion of
persons and values. It
believes that these values are spiritual, moral and ethical, as well as
humane, beautiful, loving and happy. Inma
believes that persons may come and go as they wish, but also it believes that
the values will stay and fertilize its area, and it believes the
nexus will cover the globe. Inma
believes that Earth loves us and that we love Earth. It
believes that from the love and from the creativity will come a new model for
the world of human future. It
believes that we have started that future - now. I
guess that if you and I believe these things we are Inma. On
Where Perhaps somewhere there is an
unimportant place caught between East and West, North and South, Past and
Future. It is so far behind that it can only go
forward. Its indigenous people are so badly
treated they will risk anything for a better life. Its white overlords are so distant
from the center of their own culture that they don’t know where to go except
to Self Government. It is wealthy, industrial, consumer,
under-populated and chaotic. It has tropical coasts and islands. It
has cool mountains and tablelands. It is closer to Asian and Melanesian
peoples than its own capital city, and it often sees itself as the end of the
earth. Yet the desires of some of its
citizens are: to build the first free territory guided by global humane laws to implement the UN covenants on Human Rights to give migrants, visitors and native born an equal say to accept ideas, people and music of living from all over to welcome and respect every interested person to love Planet Earth, and to take a next step towards a happier more beautiful more human
community. Maybe one such place is called
Northern Queensland, Australia. But an Aboriginal word meaning 'a
coming together' is Inma. Together these poems provide a feel for the subject matter of
this Thesis. I first received these two poems at Neville Yeomans’ funeral in
March 2000. CONTENTS
CONTENTS TWO POEMS WRITTEN BY DR. NEVILLE THOMAS YEOMANS CHAPTER ONE - A WARM DECEMBER MORNING AND A DAY IN
AUTUMN A LITTLE KNOWN EXTRAORDINARY AUSTRALIAN PHOTOS
Photo 1 The Mango Tree out the window of Neville’s
Yungaburra house Photo 2 We sat at this bench as we ate paw paw and
talked. Photo 3 Neville lost in the bush - A painting by L
Spencer. Photo 4 A Photo of Neville in his later years.
Dr.
Neville Thomas Yeomans at his desk at Fraser House - Circa 1961 ACKNOWLEDGING
The research breadth went hand-in-hand
with the support of many. I acknowledge the Indigenous people of Australasia
SE Asia Oceania Region who have been so much a part of the social action at
the heart of this Thesis. I also acknowledge the members of my family who
lived with the myriad small and large consequences of my involvement in this
prolonged and time consuming endeavor. My profound respect for Dr. Neville
Yeomans is woven into this work. My kindred enablers/supporters are integral
- Marj Roberts, Mareja Bin Juda, Norma Perrott, Nasuven Enares and her
sisters Joyce Morris (deceased) and Phyllis Corowa, Faith Bandler, Geoff
Guest, Terry Widders, Alex Dawia, Rob Buschkens, Jules and Chris Collingwood,
John Lonergon and others who know who they are. My other interviewees all had
zest and were so willing - Margaret Cockett, Warwick Bruen, Phil Chilmaid,
Stephanie Yeomans, Stephanie and Ken Yeomans’ Daughters, Allan and Ken
Yeomans, Terry O’Neill, Dr. Ned Iceton, Professor Alfred Clark and the Fraser
House Patient and Outpatient. Financial support at key times was provided by
the Jessie Street Foundation, Down to Earth (Vic) and the Gippsland Catholic
Diocese through Jim Connelly. Stimulating sustained support came from Zuzenka
Kutena, Dr. Elizabeth DeCastro, Judith Goldsworthy, Gregory Leonhart, Dihan
Wijewickrama, Andrew Cramb, Don Foster, Mary and David Cruise, and Dr. Werner
Pelz. Also providing crucial support at key stages were Elsbeth Stephens,
Steve Andreas, Greg Burgess, Richard Clements, Andres Kabel, Barry McQueen,
Richard Maidment, Vic Morrant, and Jim Vickers-Willis. Rich perspectives were
provided by my fellow JCU research students and Dr. Sue McGinty and her
husband Dr. Tony McMahon’s during the Qualitative Research Seminars. Tony as
my supervisor provided sustained caring tight academic support that was
fundamental. I acknowledge the profound connexity of Mother Earth and the Web
of Life source of life Inma - towards a caring humane respectful sustained
Epoch. ABSTRACT
This qualitative
naturalistic inquiry research explores psychiatrist barrister Dr. Neville
Yeomans’ lifelong action towards enabling gentle transitions from the current
non-sustainable inequitable inhumane exploitative Global epoch to a humane
life-affirming one. The research’s three
interconnected areas specify firstly the precursors and structures/processes
used by Yeomans in establishing Australia’s first psychiatric therapeutic
community ‘Fraser House’ in 1959; secondly, Fraser House outreaches; and
thirdly, the evolving of the Laceweb Social Movement through the SE Asia
Oceania Australasia Region. Yeomans ways of social
action are traced to his collaborating with his father P.A. Yeomans and
brothers Allan and Ken in evolving Keyline sustainable agricultural practice
informed by Australasian indigenous people’s experience. The research specifies Dr. Yeomans’ adapting of
indigenous socio-healing/socio-medicine ways and Keyline to the psychosocial
and psychobiological fields in evolving processes he called, ‘Cultural
Keyline’. The
research documents Yeomans’ evolving Fraser House as a dysfunctional fringe
epochal change model – patient self-governance and law/rule making via
patient-based committees, and through this, patients and outpatients
assuming all of the hospital administration roles, including initial
patient assessment, treatment, sanctions, ex-patient domiciliary support,
research, crisis support to the surrounding communities and training
psychiatrists in community psychiatry. Yeomans’ pioneering of Big Group
Therapy (100-180 attending), including all patients and all staff on duty,
and patients’ family/friends/workmates as outpatients is documented. Some of
Yeomans’ leader roles and Big Group/Small Group processes are specified.
Small group therapy with membership based on rotating sociological categories
is described Fraser House outreaches energized by Yeomans are outlined including:
his use of advisory roles to legitimate and protect this social action; his
pioneering role as New South Wales’ first Director of Community Mental Health;
his setting up Australia’s first Community Mental Health Unit in Paddington
NSW; his enabling of the Paddington Festival in 1969 towards starting
Paddington Bazaar to surround this Unit; his energizing of intercultural
festivals, gatherings and artistic happenings in the 1960/70s; his evolving
of intercultural wellbeing networks among Asians and Africans; his adapting
and disseminating of Cultural Keyline to business and other organizations;
his entering as an independent candidate in the 1969 Federal election, his
writing of newspaper columns, his pioneering of mediation in many fields in
Australia, and his contributing to Divorce Law Reform and the inclusion of
family counseling/mediation in Family Law. The evolving of the Laceweb networks amongst Indigenous and
other intercultural healers in the Region supporting self-help/ mutual-help
amongst Indigenous/Small Minorities trauma survivors, and stopping
dysfunction among them is traced to Fraser House and Yeomans’ seminal role in
enabling Aboriginal Human Relations Gatherings in 1971, 1972 and 1973 in
North East New South Wales. Yeomans sustained action research enabling
networking among indigenous/intercultural natural nurturers in the Region are
specified including, his setting up a number of small
Therapeutic Community Houses in Northern Queensland, and extending the Fraser
House model in evolving an International Normative Model Area in Northern
Queensland as a model exploring World Order Governance. The
research concludes with Yeomans’ writings about his macro-framework for
epochal change over the next 200 years, and with future possibilities for the
Laceweb. CHAPTER ONE - A WARM DECEMBER
MORNING AND A DAY IN AUTUMN
The topic of this Thesis, ‘Whither
Goeth The World – Humanity or Barbarity’ entailed researching the history,
theory and practice leading to the evolving of the Laceweb social movement
among Indigenous and intercultural healers through the SE Asia Oceania
Australasia Region This Chapter introduces the life work of Dr. Neville Yeomans,
discusses the significance of the topic, outlines the nature of the research
and the research questions, and discusses why they are important. It also
discusses briefly the story of how I became involved with this project and
the way my biogeography has led me to undertake this research. An outline of
the rest of the Thesis is included. Because of the expansiveness of the
subject, some of the matters that will be treated in some depth in this
research are introduced briefly in this Chapter. This thesis explores Dr. Neville
Yeomans’ role in evolving social action with the aim of enabling a gentle
transition from the current Global epoch to a new humane and life-affirming
one with new forms of social realities respecting and embracing diversity and
having resonance with traditional Indigenous relating to the Web of Life. One
aspect of this change is fostering regionality and locality in a life-world
where every aspect is recognizing, respecting, celebrating, fostering, and
sustaining the inter-connectedness of humane nurturing values and the
diversity of all life forms and networks. The title of the thesis, ‘Whither
Goeth the World – Humanity or Barbarity’ is resonant with Dr. Yeomans’ quest
for Epochal change. This title is an adaptation of a title used by Dr.
Yeomans, ‘Whither Goeth the Law – Humanity or Barbarity’ (Carlson and Yeomans 1975a; Carlson
and Yeomans 1975b) I have elected to use Dr. Neville
Yeomans’ first name in the balance of this Research as a mark of my profound
respect for him. For me he is Neville, not ‘Yeomans’. We had a working
friendship for over 13 years. Neville was of immense support in times of
crisis in my life. A LITTLE KNOWN EXTRAORDINARY
AUSTRALIAN
Dr.
Neville Thomas Yeomans, a little known extraordinary Anglo-Australian
humanitarian was born in 1928 to Percival and Rita Yeomans and died in Brisbane
in May 2000. Neville grew up in a stimulating household. As an adolescent he
worked in sustainable agriculture with his father P. A. Yeomans who was
described by the World famous English agriculturalist Lady Balfour as the
person making the greatest contribution to sustainable agriculture in the
past 200 years (Mulligan
and Hill 2001). Neville Yeomans worked
closely with his father and brother Allan (and later younger brother Ken) in
pioneering a sustainable agriculture process called Keyline (Yeomans
1955; Yeomans 1958; Yeomans 1958; Yeomans 1965; Yeomans 1971; Yeomans 1971;
Yeomans and Yeomans 1993).
Neville adapted Keyline as ‘Cultural Keyline’ and pioneered this in the
fields of psychiatry, sociology of medicine, social psychology,
psychobiology, intercultural studies, peace studies, humanitarian law and
global governance. All of Nevilles and his
father’s work was informed and guided by a relational familiarity with
Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wisdom about the social and
natural life worlds. While non-Aboriginal people had seen Australia as a
harsh and hostile place to be conquered and tamed, Aboriginal and Islander
people had a loving and affectionate relation to Earth as their nurturing
mother – a profoundly different relating. Neville encapsulated this relating
in the words of his Inma poem, ‘Inma believes that
Earth loves us and that we love Earth’. Neville and his father’s work
and way were guided and informed by this ancient loving caring tradition. In preparing for his humanitarian
life work, Neville obtained degrees in zoology and then medicine/psychiatry.
He completed postgraduate studies in sociology and psychology with
accompanying extensive reading in history, anthropology and peace studies. He
followed with a degree in law, specializing in humanitarian law, and law
studies in mediation as an alternative to adversarial law in dispute
settlement (Carlson and Yeomans 1975a; Carlson
and Yeomans 1975b). During the 1970s, he studied
spoken and written Chinese and Indonesian, as well as Chinese painting.
Amongst his other studies Neville studied 12 months at the Criminology Law
School at the University of Sydney. As part of his quest to become sensitive
to the intercultural nuances of the Region, Neville studied at a Technical
College for eighteen months in Indonesian language and twelve months in
Mandarin language both as spoken and written languages. He remained an avid reader and engaged in continuous
action research throughout his life. Neville commenced his endeavors with what he called the ‘mad and
bad’ people of Sydney. Neville said that he recognized that in 1959, with
considerable upheaval and questioning in the area of mental health in NSW,
and a Royal Commission being mooted into past practices, there was a small
window of opportunity for innovation. Neville started his epochal quest in
earnest by setting up the psychiatric unit, Fraser House, in the grounds of
the North Ryde Psychiatric Hospital in 1959. He obtained permission to have
half of the patient intake from prisons so that he could explore self-help
possibilities among the ‘mad and bad’ at the fringe of society. In
psychiatry, Neville was a World leader in therapeutic community, full family
therapeutic community, community mental health, and large group therapy. Many
of the iconoclastic practices that he introduced into psychiatry are now
standard practice in Australia. He pioneered suicide support and other life
crisis telephone services, the running of multicultural community markets and
festivals and other multicultural events, and alternative lifestyle
festivals. Neville also influenced the introduction of family counseling and
family mediation into family law in Australia and mediation into Australian
society. He was also responsible for energizing praxis networks in such
diverse, though related fields as social work, criminology, family
counseling, community services, community mental health, prison
administration, business management, intercultural relations, psychosocial
self-help groups, social ecology, futures studies, self organizing systems,
qualitative method, World order, and Global, Regional, and Local Governance. While the many things Neville
Yeomans pioneered are now known by many in Australia and around the World,
very few know he was the initiator. The (Sydney) Sun newspaper included
Neville’s groundbreaking work in psychiatry and therapeutic community with
six other Australians under the heading, ‘The Big Seven Secrets Australians
were first to solve’ (17 July, 1963). Dr. Neville Yeomans was included
with people like Sir John Eccles, Sir Norman Greg and Dr. V. M
Coppleson. How
all these diverse social actions are related and interlinked by Dr. Neville
Yeomans and others are the foci of this Thesis This research traces
Neville Yeomans fostering of the emergence of a social movement he called the
Laceweb evolving amongst oppressed Indigenous and Small Minorities in the SE Asia
Oceania Australasian Region. Wellbeing
action by Indigenous, Small Minority and intercultural psychosocial healers
and natural nurturers has been evolving in the Region for over 40 years. This
network of ‘natural nurturers’ continues to evolve. Some of the focal people
now engaged in the Laceweb movement that emerged from Neville’s Sydney action
are among the most oppressed and marginalized people in Far North Queensland
and around the Darwin Top End. They are Aboriginal and Islanders and other
people such as East Timorese, West Papuans, Bougainvillians and others from
oppressed minority groups in the Region with small populations. Global
governance organizations call them ‘Small Minorities’. These focal people are
mainly women. Neville’s term for these informal networkers was ‘natural
nurturers’ as they are engaged in self-help and mutual help as they go about
their everyday lives. The research explores
Neville’s claim that he was actioning a three hundred year-plus project -
Laceweb action evolving humane transition processes towards a more humane
caring nurturing epoch; one that respects the Earth and all life on it. This research traces the
evolving of Laceweb networks in the Region supporting
self-help and mutual-help amongst Indigenous and Small Minorities’ trauma survivors,
as well as supporting the resolving of domestic violence, oppression of women
and children, sexual abuse, substance abuse, criminal and psychiatric
incarceration, and other dysfunction towards evolving a humane caring
nurturing Way of life as exemplars of Epochal change. Neville had first hand
experience of this dysfunction in growing up near remote aboriginal
communities. At the same time he recognized that indigenous holistic communal
process sustaining social cohesion had potency in resolving the above
dysfunction - what Neville called
Cultural Healing Action. THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS
While aspects of this endeavor have
been the subject of a PhD (Clark 1969), and other research and writings in
the past (Yeomans 1961; Yeomans 1961; Webb
and Bruen 1968; Clark and Yeomans 1969; Watson 1970, p 109; Paul and Lentz
1977; Yeomans 1980, p.64; Yeomans 1980; Wilson 1990, Ch 6, p. 71-85; Clark
1993, p. 61, 117) this will be the first research
that attempts to draw the many aspects of the above and related social action
together. It took a number of months
of reflection and discussions with Neville and my Supervisor for three
‘natural’ parts to emerge - Fraser House, Fraser House outreach and the
evolving of the Laceweb. The research questions emerged from this cleavering. The research questions are: 1. What were the theoretical
and action precursors to, and the nature of the structuring and processes
used by Neville Yeomans in evolving and sustaining the psychiatric unit
Fraser House? 2. What change processes,
innovations and social action evolved in and from Fraser House? With what
effect? 3. What is the Laceweb? What is
its structure and process, and how has it being evolving and sustained? 4. What patterns and
integration are there linking aspects of Neville Yeomans’ work - Fraser
House, Fraser House outreach and the Laceweb? 5. What possible futures may
emerge from Laceweb praxis As the Thesis is investigating
something with so many facets, I had to make decisions about my research
focus and what was to be included and excluded. I have elected to report
extensively on structure, process and their connexity while providing a broad
feel for their fit in the interstices of Neville’s massive endeavor. In order
to cope with the extent and complex richness of my focal interests, the
following are excluded. Firstly, while outlining and
answering the criticisms others have made about Neville and Fraser House, I
do not engage in identifying shortcomings, or criticizing his life work. I
have gathered together material that others may use for further research
including critique and evaluation. The limits I set to my research have still
left me with a massive endeavor. Secondly, I
report on Neville’s extensive life work and public persona and the public life
of Fraser House staff. I exclude research concerning his personal life while
acknowledging and recognizing this was and is fundamental to an understanding
of the man. In fact, Neville recognized and made restricted file notes on
issues in his and other Fraser House senior staff’s private lives that were
reflected in the dynamics of Fraser House. Neville drew attention to the
ethical dilemmas in research where adequate writing up of a case would give
sufficient material to identify focal people to their potential harm. Neville
made suggestions in a short monograph to the World Health Organization that
may address these dilemmas about research protocols including anonyminity of
individuals, institutions and nations where important, though social delicate
research, is being conducted (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 129-130). Thirdly, while researching the
evolving and the nature of the Laceweb social movement, the Laceweb networks themselves
have not been researched. I have scant links to these networks and I am not
cleared to share information. Fourthly, while the social action
being researched has drawn on Australian and Oceania Indigenous
socio-medicine and other social and community social cohesion knowledge and
way, this thesis only briefly describes some of these without going into
detail. I do not re-present or speak for anyone. LIFE CHANGES
I was
privileged to be mentored by Neville over a fourteen-year period from 1986 to
2000. Neville arranged for me to engage in sustained action research into every
aspect of his life work. I researched and wrote this Thesis with his
blessing, encouragement, cooperation and support. Further, I carried out this
research so that Australians and the World would know more about this man.
With the inhumane self serving behavior of sections of the World traumatizing
and exploiting/harming the majority of the Earth’s population and fast
destroying our children’s’ future, Neville’s lifework is timely, practical,
seminal and potent. This Thesis makes his life work accessible. I first met Neville in the mid 1980’s. At first all I knew about
him was that he was a psychiatrist who had just come back from doing a really
interesting workshop on powerful brief therapeutic processes – NLP Sensory
Submodality Processes (Bandler, Andreas et al. 1985; Andreas and Andreas
1987). At
the time I knew nothing of Fraser House or Neville’s wider work. I attended
the workshop he was co-facilitating in Balmain, Sydney. I was taken with the
ecology of the man. He was precise and thorough, and incredible quick in
sensing everyone in the group. I had never met anyone like him. He singled me
out as a resonant person. At lunch on both days of the workshop we shared
life stories related to working with groups and change processes. He
specifically engaged me on my academic and work experience. By the end of
that lunch, he knew I had a Social Science degree in Sociology and a
Behavioral Science Honors Degree in Psychology. My honors research was in
clinical psychology and I had completed postgraduate studies in
neuro-psychology. He knew I had been eligible to do PhD level research since
1981. He also knew of, and could see ‘fit’ in my prior degree-level industry
studies in actuarial and financial services to become a Fellow of the
Australian Insurance Institute by examination. He also saw resonance in my
Diploma level studies in Personnel Management and Organizational Training and
Development. I was for a time a member of the Australian Institute of
Personnel Management and the Australian Institute of Training and
Development. Neville delighted in my revelation that I had been sacked from
most of my jobs for provoking the system to change; at the time I did not know
that Neville worked with the resources on the margins. At that first meeting
I had no idea that Neville was a constant networker and that he was checking
me out as to how I might fit and be interested in the social action he was
engaged in. We discussed my consulting work supporting CEOs of multinational
companies on organizational change, and psychosocial group process at the
senior executive level. I found out later that he had seen ‘fit’ in all
aspects of my background including my security consulting work in electronic
article surveillance. I had my training in counseling from Terry O’Neill at the
Student Counseling Unit at La Trobe University in the late 1970’s and was an
on-call para-professional crisis counselor in the La Trobe University Student
Counseling Center for eighteen months. I found out shortly after meeting
Neville that Terry based his way of counseling largely on Terry’s voluntary
work at Fraser House and the influence of Neville in the 1960’s. When I told Neville about Terry training me
in counseling this further strengthened his interest in me as a potential
resource. Because of my psychosocial community and group therapy
experience, much of it subsequently in groups with Neville, and my brief
therapy skills, Neville arranged for me to provide 18 months in-service
training and mentoring support to a psychologist friend of his working within
a medium security special protection prison facility. This involved my
co-facilitating, along with the jail psychologist, groups of 12 inmates as
well as mentoring the jail psychologist on one-on-one work. Neville
specifically broached my potential to research his lifework via a PhD in
1992. Key things for Neville were that
I was eligible to do a PhD and also, that I had experienced major trauma in
my life. I knew from personal experience about trauma self-help. In
Queensland in 1993 he again went thoroughly into all my background although
the chatting was laid back. Little did I know then how my entire blend of
background ‘fitted’ his interests and foci. It seems that I was potentially
the person he had been looking for for more than 20 years (Yeomans 1980; Yeomans 1980, p. 64; Yeomans 1980). He quietly suggested me doing a PhD on his life work a number
of times in the following years. By 1997, he was keen for me to get started as he knew he was in real
trouble with his health and that it was life threatening. When I told him in
July 1998 that I was starting a PhD on his life he was elated. I could
literally see his mind clicking. He was checking for fit. Then he said a big,‘Yes! Your background is
perfect!’ I knew in large part this was because of my dysfunctionality as
well as my experience and abilities. As discussed throughout this research,
Neville had great faith in the dysfunctional fringe. A WARM DECEMBER MORNING
This thesis is about people connecting with each other and
discovering and learning from and supporting each other. I will share a few
things that may support you in connecting with the pith and moment of this
research and how I came to be doing it. Neville Yeomans and I are eating paw
paw in Yungaburra. It is a warm December morning in 1993 – in the lush
greenness of the tropics of Far North Queensland, Australia. Neville and I
are having a good time in friendly banter. Through the open window of
Neville’s heritage listed large bungalow type house comes the sweet smell of
hundreds of over-ripe mangoes on an immense tree. The air is permeated with the fragrance of frangipani and other
tropical flowers. Going back there in memory now, my longtime friend and
colleague and I are engaged in a casual conversation of significance. We are
talking about the origins of the passions that have energized and interwoven
our lives. Neville has no hesitation in saying that a defining moment in the
origins of his passions occurred in 1931 when he was three years old. He
recalls becoming separated from his parents and being lost in the hot arid
desert of Western Queensland.
Photo 1 The Mango Tree out the window of
Neville’s Yungaburra house
Photo 2 We sat at this bench as we ate paw
paw and talked.
Photo 3 Neville lost in the bush - A
painting by L Spencer. In wandering away from his parents as a three year old, Neville had
been absorbed in minutia - looking at the little plants and pebbles. After a
time his body demanded his attention away from the pebbles. He was becoming
parched. His mouth and lips were becoming very dry. His attention flits again
to the pebbles. Then everything begins to shimmer. Every direction seems the
same. His legs go to jelly and the world begins to tilt all over the place as
he crashes to the ground from heat exhaustion. Neville vividly remembers his
near death delirium. Being a bright little three year old, he knows about
death and that he is about to die. He desperately longs to live to make the
world a better place. In delirium, emotions sweep him. Awful dread mingles
with immense love - and all this is reaching out for love and nurturing and all their possibilities. In his
near-death delirium little Neville sees a shimmering black giant coming
towards him and feels being gently picked up. Neville feels the giant’s
gentleness - strong yet soft - and presently he feels the cool fresh water
that gently touches his lips, and is being poured on his body, and assuaging
his raging thirst. Then, still in delirium, Neville feels being carried for a
time and then passed by the Aboriginal tracker who had found him to nurturing
Aboriginal women and he is ‘home’ again and his yearning is being
full-filled. The above piece was confirmed by Neville in September 1998 as
encapsulating the feel of his experience. It was part of my first writing
that reduced Neville to tears. Neville, in the care of these Aboriginal women had personal
experience of Aboriginal socio-medicine. He knew from his own experiencing of
it that Aboriginal socio-medicine is powerful. Psychiatrist Richard Cawte has
written of Aboriginal socio-medicine (Cawte 1974; Cawte 2001). I understand Indigenous socio-medicine to entail a wide range
of social processes with a central aim of community social cohesion and
wellbeing. Aboriginal socio-medicine links the psychosocial with the
psychobiological through special forms of embodied social interaction.
Neville experienced and embodied this link. Neville spoke of how, during the
years of his childhood, he constantly returned to his desert delirium
experience as he was forming his very big dream of doing things that would
make the World profoundly different. The dreaming evolved as an action quest.
Neville said that from that traumatic experience, what he was
exploring and mulling over all the time as a child and later as an
adolescent, was how could he enable an Epochal transition. He was talking of
enabling a shift of the magnitude of the one from the Feudal System to the
Industrial System in England. He read up on how that transition occurred. He
was passionate about how he could link with others in enabling a Global
Epochal transition to a humane, nurturing, sustainable social-life-world. He
was talking about a life-world that is respecting, celebrating and sustaining
diversity of all life forms and networks on the biosphere. He kept asking
himself, how would someone do that? How could he do that? He realized that it
may take up to 300 years to do. And if it takes a few life times to do this,
what could he do that would set up action that was self-energizing and
self-organizing; processes that could, no - would withstand the withering ways of the current epoch in
decline as it seeks by any means to maintain itself. What processes could
enable reconstituting to continue through time, to finish the transition? Even on hearing Neville saying words like these in 1993, it
never occurred to me that that was what he was really attempting to do. Subsequently, a number of people I
interviewed about Neville all confirmed the epochal focus of his social
action. Margaret Cockett, his personal Assistant at and after Fraser House,
Stephanie Yeomans, his Sister-in-law, and Stuart Hill, a Professor of Social
Ecology at University of Western Sydney, all said that Neville had said
similar things to the above in talking with them about the emergence of his
quest from his childhood sociomedicine experience. As well, Paul Wilson, who
was for a time Head of the Australian Institute of Criminology and now Dean
of the School of Humanities at Bond University, implies the same
understanding of Neville’s quest in his writing (Wilson 1990, Ch. 6). Neville went on to tell me a story that was similar to his being
lost in the bush. In 1943, Neville’s father co-purchased with his brother-in-law
Jim Barnes, two adjacent properties totaling 1000 acres at North Richmond,
one hour West of Sydney in NSW (Mulligan and Hill 2001; Hill 2002; Hill 2002). In the next year when Neville was sixteen, a second defining
episode occurred. Neville was out riding on his horse Ginger on one of their
properties with his Uncle Jim (Barnes) when they were caught in a grassfire
that was being fanned by powerful winds. Jim yelled to Neville to dismount
and squeeze into the hollow of a dead tree and cover himself to shield the
radiant heat. The firestorm was coming towards them at phenomenal speed. The
fire front was long. Jim on his horse could neither outflank it nor out-race
it. Being too large to squeeze through the gap into the stump, Jim rode
straight at the fire – attempting to ride through it. The horse went from
under him, and Neville, watching from within the tree stump saw his Uncle
burn to death. Amid the shock and horror was the dread of his own impending
horrible death. Neville said that he slumped into traumatized delirium consumed
with dread laced with pervasive love similar to his experience when lost as a
three year old. He described being on the edge of oblivion and again yearning
for a better reality for all people. When found, physically safe, Neville was
profoundly traumatized. Ginger, though singed, survived. Circumstance created another similarity. At age three it was the
Aboriginal women who gave nurturing care. During the time of this grass fire
there happened to be an Islander women staying with the Yeomans family as a
housekeeper-support for Neville’s mother. The woman was an Australian South
Sea Islander - Faith Bandler’s sister, Kathleen Mussing. It was in Kathleen’s
nurturing care that Neville found enfolding love. Faith Bandler was one of
those responsible for the referendum on Aboriginal voting rights. Faith had
support from Jessie Street. The Jessie Street Foundation in memory of Jessie
has supported Laceweb action in 2001 and 2002 (Laceweb-Homepage 2001). Neville attributed his healing from this second trauma in the months
following the fire, to the nurturing socio-medicine of this housekeeper,
Kathleen. In essence, this entailed love, care, nurturing and affection as
the central components of psychobiological healing. Neville re-met Kathleen Mussing when she
was old and dying and she didn’t recognize him. Neville described that
meeting as one of the saddest experiences in his life, though permeated for
him with immense love. In the ensuing years up till the Yungaburra 1993 conversation,
Neville had progressively involved me in aspects of his quest. Even so, I
knew very little. It was a bit at a time. I did not know at the time that he
had written a letter to the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities
in 1980 providing an overview of his work (Yeomans 1980, p. 64; Yeomans 1980). This short letter is reproduced in full below: From the Outback Dear Sir, Since A. W.
Clark and I produced the monograph ‘Fraser House’ in 1969, I have moved to
private practice in Cairns, North East Australia. This is an isolated area
for this country, but is rapidly becoming an intercultural front door to
Melanesia and Asia. ‘Up North’
the therapeutic community model has extended into humanitarian mutual help
for social change. Two of the small cities in this region have self-help
houses based on Fraser House. An Aboriginal Alcohol and Drug hostel is moving
in the same direction, as are other bodies. These are
facilitated by a network called UN-Inma, the second word of which is
aboriginal for Oneness. Actually, aborigines have discussed offering one of
the Palm Island group off the North Queensland coast as a model therapeutic
community prison. The Director
of the Australian Institute of Criminology has the support of the United
Nations Secretary-General for the idea of an international island haven for
otherwised condemned political prisoners. Our proposal is an application and
extension, in which the Institute Director is ‘extremely interested’. The main
conditions sought by the Indigenous group are that selected aborigines in
Australian prisons also be permitted to complete their sentences on such
islands; and that therapeutic self-management with conjugal rights be the
administrative model. One of our major next
steps is to bring together a psychosocial evaluative research team to monitor
the development of this regional community movement. Such may take some time
as social scientists are fairly uncommon in the area (my italics). Some years ago, I arranged a cost-benefit analysis of Fraser
House, compared first with a traditional Admission unit in another
psychiatric hospital, and second with a newly constructed Admission unit
which some felt might be a pseudo therapeutic community. Somewhat to my surprise Fraser House was not only more effective
but also cost less than the other two. The traditional unit was next
cost-effective and the ‘pseudo’ unit least. Unfortunately this report was
never publically circulated. Until recently I was unable to locate a copy.
One has now been found and it seems I may soon have a manuscript. This Thesis revisits this letter in documenting the flow-on
action from Fraser House. Note the italicized paragraph. Neville had been
looking for someone like me at least from 1980. He was sizing me up in the
mid 1980s. AN AUTUMN DAY
During September 1998 Neville agreed to read some of my Thesis
writing about the precursors to Fraser House. Neville said, ‘When I read your
draft it was so congruent, it moved me to tears - it’s like a scientific
detective story.’ My writing touched strong emotions that had him sobbing. He said
I was underway and that he would not comment more on that piece of writing or
read any of the Thesis until it was finished so that it was my work,
self organized by me. In November 1999, Neville asked whether I would have
the Thesis finished by February 2000. He was very keen to read it, though
only when it was finished. When I told him it would not be finished by then
he said that was regrettable. In December 1999 there was inexplicably no
reply on his phone for two and a half weeks. Then one morning Neville’s
daughter answered the phone and said that Neville’s bladder cancer, which had
been in remission, had rapidly moved everywhere in his body and that he would
die very soon and that they were shifting him from hospital to his former
wife (his second wife) Lien’s place in Queensland. His daughter said he was
so bad I would not be able to speak to him again. This was devastating news.
I rang the hospital for a status report and was knocked further emotionally
to be put directly though to Neville without knowing this was about to
happen. Neville spoke and sounded the best I had every found him. He was
clear, calm, relaxed, poised and centered. He said, ‘Les have you heard. The
cancer’s gone everywhere. I have just received a massive dose of morphine and
I am going up to be with Lien (his second Wife) and Quan (his son). I can’t
help you any more. Goodbye’. I said, ‘Goodbye.’ Those seconds were our last
chat. Then he hung up. Quan said in April 2000, ‘If Neville died this instant
it would be a mercy’. He died about 4 weeks later in May 2000. Neville’s
Obituary written by a friend Peter Carroll was read by Carroll at the funeral
and appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. It is included as Appendix 1.
Photo 4 A Photo of Neville in his later
years. THE
THESIS STRUCTURE
While arbitrary, this Thesis divides
Neville’ life work into three inter-woven threads. The first part is
Neville’s pioneering in Australia of community therapy and his global
pioneering of full-family residential therapeutic community practices within
the therapeutic community based psychiatric unit, Fraser House (Yeomans 1961, p.382-384; Yeomans
1961, p.829-830). Neville set up this Unit at North
Ryde Psychiatric hospital on the North Shore in Sydney, NSW in 1959, and
became its founding director and psychiatrist. Neville and other Fraser House staff
claimed that Fraser House practice established that extremely dysfunctional
people could be the prime source of their own reintegration and move to
wellbeing functioning (Yeomans 1961; Yeomans 1961; Madew,
Singer et al. 1966; Clark 1969; Clark and Yeomans 1969). The precursors influencing Neville
in setting up and evolving Fraser House are explored. A core and integrating
aspect of the Thesis will be articulating the emergence and the use of a way
of being, functioning and action by Neville’s father, P. A. Yeomans in
creating Keyline processes in sustainable agriculture. Neville’s extended his
father’s Keyline into the psychosocial sphere within Fraser House and Fraser
House outreach in a process Neville called Cultural Keyline. This is
researched Another thread woven through
Neville’s life and this Thesis is the wisdom and being of Indigenous people. P.A.
(Neville’s father) and Neville had a lot of contact and affinity with
Australian Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Australian South Sea
Islander people. Neville particularly sought out the company of nurturing women
from these groups. The father and son’s profound connexity to nature is
resonant with Indigenous way. ‘Connexity’ is an old English word meaning that
a connexion continues between people, things, and between people and things
such that they are simultaneously interwoven, inter-dependent,
inter-connected, inter-related, and interlinked. Neville’s pioneering of both
therapeutic community and full family therapeutic community in Australia are
documented. In the second part of the Thesis,
the research documents the spread and influence of Fraser House’s guiding
frames of reference, structure, processes and practices into the wider
community. The claims by Neville and other Ex Fraser House staff that Fraser
House’s structure, processes and practices had a substantial effect on mental
health practice in Australia are investigated. The third part of the Thesis traces
the use by Neville of Fraser House’s frames of reference, structures,
processes, practices and outreach in enabling the evolving of the Laceweb
Social Movement spreading among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
and other minorities in the remote regions of Far North Australia and
extending throughout the SE Asia Oceania Australasia Region. In enabling with
others this network, Neville was tapping into pre-existing nurturing energy
amongst Indigenous people and people of oppressed small minorities in the
Region. The Thesis traces the processes used to extend this social movement
via networking among people Neville described as, ‘natural nurturers’. While
these people are typically fighting for their very existence as a people and
culture in their place, Neville said that the natural nurturers were always
present and have been present since antiquity. Neville
and others fully recognized that everything they did was using and/or
re-constituting the socio-cohesive ways of being of the ages among focal
people who had been decimated by dominant societies. The Research documents
the psychosocial and other histories of Laceweb social action over the past
forty-three years, as well as their precursors from the 1930’s onwards. The term ‘Laceweb’ was initiated by
Neville. One summer morning in 1993 in Yungaburra in Far North Queensland,
Neville and I were discussing the Laceweb and it seemed that the Movement
had, as far as Neville knew, no name. Neville knew the potency of symbols,
icons and logos and said these were not used in the Laceweb, and he did not
think them in any way appropriate at the present. Neville talked about naming
the movement. Within seconds he came up with ‘Laceweb’. This name was, in
Neville’s terms, ‘an isomorphic metaphor’ – something of similar form and
resonance to the social movement that was evolving. The name was from a
natural outback Australian phenomenon that Neville had personally
experienced. Some years previously Neville had been traveling alone in
outback Queensland. When he awoke in the morning and looked out of his tent,
the low gorse bush, about fifty centimeters high, appeared to be covered in
snow as far as the eye could see. What had happened was that during the night
millions of tiny spiders had floated in on thin webs, drifting in the slight
moving air. The continuous, immense web the spiders had spun overnight
stretched to the horizon in all directions. For Neville it had a very Yin –
very feminine energy reminiscent of lace, and hence ‘Laceweb’. The many ways
that this metaphor is resonant with the Laceweb Social Movement is discussed
in Chapters Nine and Ten. The Thesis Chapters are as follows. Chapter
Two discusses the method used in completing this Thesis, including processes
used in data collection and analysis. It also identifies and gives brief
backgrounds of the people interviewed. Chapter Three describes the frames and ways used by Neville, and
the influences on his Way, including Keyline, Indigenous wisdom and way,
specific life experiences, academic study and reading, as well as his
theoretical and pre-theoretical reflecting. Another
resonant conceptual link for Neville was the Chinese Yin/Yang concepts with
difference/diversity and unity as aspects, with humane healing nurturing
being very much part of the Yin nature. Neville was always exploring the Yin
energies and how they may temper Yang energies. Chapter Four outlines Fraser
House’s structure and processes, while Chapter Five discusses Fraser House
change processes. Chapter Six explores Neville’s use of Cultural Keyline in
enabling change in both psychosocial and psychobiological systems
simultaneously. Chapter Seven explores
criticisms of Neville and Fraser House as well as the steps taken by Neville
to set up transitions from government and private sector service delivery to
community self-caring. Fraser house evaluation is briefly outlined along with
a discussion of American research using Fraser house as a model. The Chapter
concludes with ethical issues in replicating Fraser House. Chapter Eight discusses the
extensions of Fraser House into the wider community and their implications.
Chapter Nine explores the nature, the evolving, and the history of the
Laceweb and its potential. Chapter Ten is integrative. It introduces
Neville’s 300 year model of epochal transition and provides glimpses of
future possibilities for Laceweb praxis in every aspect of the social life
World. REFLECTING
This Chapter has introduced the
topic, the history, theory and practice leading to the evolving of a social
movement known as the Laceweb. It has briefly discussed the significance of
the topic, outlined the nature of the research and the research questions, and
why they are important. It has explored how I became involved in the project
and the way my biography has led me to undertake the research. The next
Chapter discusses the research methods used in this Thesis. REFERENCES
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