Dorothy Rowe

"People don't suddenly become psychotic or depressed out of the blue, there's always a disaster that they suffer"  'If you make happiness your goal, then you're not going to get to it," says psychologist Dorothy Rowe. "Philosophers have been saying it for thousands of years. The goal should be an interesting life." Rowe has devoted her life to trying to help people free themselves from what she famously termed the "prison" of depression, to live that interesting life. In more than a dozen books, the self-help pioneer has set out what she believes are the obstacles that hold people back, and offered a recipe for, if not happiness, then a greater degree of satisfaction with their lot. Drawing on her…

Breaking down the barriers by Margaret Rice, 12/02/2009 Organising to interview psychologist Dorothy Rowe, the woman the BBC notes has been described as one of the six wisest people in Britain and one of the world's 100 living geniuses, it is easy to be intimidated. How accessible will she be? Will she be so remote that an interview with a mere mortal will be beyond her? Rowe earned these labels because she is the author of 13 best-selling books at the classier end of the self-help spectrum, or at the most sombre, depending on your point of view. She has long written on the simple and yet at the same time challenging steps that we can each take as individuals…

Questionnaire published in Therapy Today, February 2009, Vol 20, Iss 1 World-renowned for her work on depression, Dorothy Rowe believes perfect happiness would be very boring What made you decide to become a clinical psychologist? When I left university, where I'd majored in psychology, I taught English, history and maths in high school and didn't enjoy it. When I was invited to train as an educational psychologist I seized the chance to escape. What gives your life purpose? The purpose of my life is to live. What is your earliest memory? I was lying on my mother's lap as she dried me, presumably after a bath. What are you passionate about? The stupidity of people who insist on creating and…

The self-help delusion Spurred by the atrocities of 9/11, critics of religion first turned their fire on the fundamentalists - initially those of Islam, then those of Christianity. Now,doyenne of the make-it-alone gurus Dorothy Rowe has conventional Christians in her sights By Catherine Pepinster If you have attended literary festivals you will know which kind of author is guaranteed to be a big draw. There will be a good crowd for a novelist, a few hangers- on for a poet reciting his verse, but the sellout stars are the gurus - the ones that people feel explain the world and make sense of it. Once, that might have been the role of a priest, and certainly some of today's gurus reflect…

Published by the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College London, The Australian Centre, Strand, London WC2B 4LG. Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements, Monash University. ISBN 978 1 85507 143 8 In his preface to this book Carl Bridge explained that David O'Reilly had set out 'to explore the varied characters and accomplishments of some of the most prominent Australians in Britain, and through Britain the world, today.' David O'Reilly was a distinguished political journalist whose journalism and books provided a serious, informed and critical study of Australian politics and politicians since 1974 when he became a cadet journalist on the Australian until his untimely death in 2006. By then he had completed only 16 of the 20 interviews he had planned, and…

This woman can make you happy  Observer Sunday July 8, 2007 For 25 years, the clinical psychologist Dorothy Rowe has helped millions out of depression. Now she tells Louise Carpenter about her own tormented childhood and marriage - and why happiness is a state of mind.  The sky hangs over London like a dark, oppressive blanket. It has been drizzling all morning and is about to break into a downpour. I am in Highbury Fields looking for the flat of the clinical psychologist and writer Dorothy Rowe, renowned author of the worldwide bestseller Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison, and 11 other books including the latest, My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend: Making and Breaking Sibling Bonds, a definitive…

Interview with Hannah Pool Thursday April 05 2007 The Guardian Dorothy Rowe is a clinical psychologist and the author of 12 books, including the bestseller Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison. Born in Australia in 1930, she now lives in London. Your new book is about sibling relationships. It's called My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend. What do you mean? Sibling relationships fall into three groups: There are very close relationships and absolutely hostile distant relationships, but the bulk of them fall into a kind of anxious attachment. There is always a tension. One woman said to me, "When I am with my sisters I am serene like a swan but underneath I'm paddling like mad." And that sums…

 'God and mothers keep me in business' Interview with Dorothy Rowe by Miranda Green Published in the Financial Times Weekend section: January 26 2007 Amid the darkness and cold of yet another winter, Dorothy Rowe, whosebooks have helped many an occupant of northern climes survive and recover from depression, is in good spirits. This could be because the prolific psychologist is about to produce another volume of her insights, this time on sibling relationships. It is a move her fans hope will encourage the publishing world to reconsider its decision to let most of her 12 previous works go out of print. Or the cheerfulness may be due to Rowe's long-established routine of flying back to her native Australia every…

This Much I KnowInterview by Ursula Kenny Sunday 1 September, 2002Working as a therapist is a tremendous responsibility because you interfere in people's lives. I don't see clients any more because you get to a point where you feel you're not doing your work very well. There aren't many new plots in people's lives and when someone starts to tell you a story and you know how it's going to turn out then you stop really listening properly. I'm still in touch with a number of people who were my clients years ago. Apart from the fact that I'm really interested to know how their lives turned out, I feel a responsibility to them, I feel that I'm accountable to…

THE TIMES Saturday August 24 2002 "The guru of gloom" Interview with Alan Franks DOROTHY ROWE is the sort of woman you never see.The reason for this is very simple, if you believe her own evidence. She is invisible, and has been so since the onset of middle age. As she is now 71, the condition is well advanced; she shares it with the vast majority of women in their middle and later years. She is unnoticeable not only because she has lost her sexual allure but also because she is indistinguishable from so many others in her situation. Yet the woman is a cult figure, which in this instance means more than being revered by a small band of…

21 May 2000 LIFE SUPPORT Tim Lott:I approached Dorothy for the first time many years ago. I'd never heard of her, which is something of a disgrace considering that by that time she'd written about 10 books. I was writing my first book, The Scent of Dried Roses, about my own experiences of depression and my mother's suicide, and part of researching my book was trying to understand what depression was. I had my own idea of what it was out of my own experiences, simply because when I suffered my nervous breakdown in 1987 I had been brought out of it by taking anti-depressant drugs, so I believed the route to depression was physical and emerged out of some…

THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN February 24-25, 2001 Interview with Miriam Cosic DOROTHY ROWE doesn't look like a bomb thrower. She's grey-haired and motherly. Grandmotherly, actually. She states her case tentatively, in a discursive style full of personal anecdotes and conversational detours, as if she's clarifying her ideas as she speaks. And yet, this internationally recognised psychologist and author has been chucking incendiary critiques at the psychiatric establishment for years. What's more, she has lived in London for the past 30 years. And we all know what they think of Australians over there. "Oh, when I used to work closely with psychiatrists, they did not like me," she says mildly, and a larrikin grin edges into her voice. "I made them very…