John Barrett: a personal reflection by Lindsay St Claire
John had a magical way of slipping challenging anecdotes and shocking statistics into a lecture. You’d be hooked. Your understanding would be changed forever. This was how it was for about 200 first-year, 100 second-year and 50 third-year psychology students every year for some 30 years.
My year’s understanding was changed in the days when John drew his transactions in chalk on the blackboard – (actually, it was green) – at the Psychology Department in Berkeley Square. I remember heated discussions about the ‘myth of motherhood’ and caregiver–infant separations with a fellow ex-student. We were on a coach returning from a University ski trip and it was about ten years after we had graduated. She was using John’s approach in her PhD, which looked at stress and support during pregnancy.
This friend did her PhD in a London Teaching Hospital. I was luckier because John supervised my PhD in Bristol. As a supervisor, he was a rock. Whenever you needed him, he’d be there. He’d produce that impossibly small diary to find you ‘a slot’, no matter how busy he was. There were a lot of us, and I don’t think John ever got to eat those wholemeal sandwiches in peace. He once told me that his wife, Sarah, kept a stack of them ready in the family freezer to save time in the mornings.
As a postgraduate, I began to realise that John’s world was wider, deeper and more diverse than I could possibly comprehend. For example, when I met my husband, an actor and a musician, I discovered that John had been involved in theatre lighting and design since the 1950s. He was also an accomplished musician and had built his own baroque organ. John introduced me to his other postgrads and welcomed me to his Woodstock.
At that time, I remember he talked a lot about ‘the dignity of risk’. People had to be allowed to make mistakes without fear or embarrassment, if they were to learn. Whatever experiences or ideas we students came up with, John embraced, respected and then somehow, to our amazement, expanded on.
When I risked mentioning my father’s interest in the paranormal, John responded by recounting his close encounters with a ghostly ‘hand of glory’ and other spectres, while staying with friends in Amsterdam. When another risked discussing Freud (who was completely out of fashion), John mentioned that he’d learned German and popped over to Vienna to read some of Freud’s work to save waiting for it to be published in English. On another occasion yet another PhD student thought he’d found some obscure facet of ancient Greek architecture that John wouldn’t know about. I remember Spiros’s disbelief when he discovered that John knew all about that too – and, I think, in Greek!
As a student, you think your lecturers know everything. Then later, as a lecturer, you know you don’t and infer they couldn’t really have done so either. I do not believe this was true of John. He was always the starting point whenever I needed help or inspiration. In fact, I referred many colleagues and students on to him too and he always came up with the information – and the latest relevant research – in whatever discipline. He was more informative than Google, and of course, far more accurate and ‘methodologically underpinned’.
In addition to ‘underpinnings’, John used to talk about ‘scaffolding’: the idea that teachers provide support for learners, storing bits of memory, holding their place and guiding practical skills for them until they can manage by themselves. Any students I have supported have ultimately been supported by John’s words and deeds and it will be the same for those I, and they, go on to teach in the future.
I realised I am only one in a nexus of John’s students when I became Academic Director of Audiology in 2004. On hearing that I was putting together some new psychology units, a colleague said she had just attended a music psychology day school, given by the best lecturer she had ever heard. She recommended I tried to trace him, as he would be perfect for teaching audiologists. His name, of course, was John Barrett.
In fact, I had already contacted John and so for the past two years, it has been my great privilege and pleasure to work alongside him. The technology has changed. He ran animations of his transactions from his laptop. Other things were the same. He still produced the longest and most up-to-date reference list I have ever seen and he still hooked the students. In fact, they invited him to, their party last Christmas – and he attended. The discussions continued late that night.
Something John talked about this year was ‘unlearning’ – that we might have to unlearn assumptions that we have picked up without a shred of evidence. My assumption was that John would always be there to teach and advise. Hi wife Sarah tells me he was only at Bristol for two score years – 30 years’ lecturing full time in psychology and a further ten with an even bigger lecture load, all over the place. So I suppose I will have to ‘unlearn’ that assumption. Many other friends, colleagues, tutees, students and adult learners from all walks of life will have to, too.
In writing this, I know John would be pleased that I have developed two new understandings of his ubiquitous transactions. First, a part of his friendship and scholarship will always be recreated in me and countless others. Second, the special energy John generously shared with us was also energy that Sarah and their sons Tim and Chris helped to create.
With love and thanks, Lindsay St Claire.