In my first three years at the University of Manitoba, I had
two nervous breakdowns: I could not imagine a future for myself in the world for which I was being prepared. I was a student radical by 1967. By 1968 I had
dropped out with seven others to form a commune, a free school, and an
underground newspaper. I read voraciously on various forms of therapy,
especially gestalt therapy, and I apprenticed to a therapist who traveled
to communes and co-ops and other intentional communities. We gave free
group therapy as we went. I learned skills of group processing, consensus
forming, how to be in the present.