A South African Psychiatrist, he qualified in medicine and in psychiatry in Britain.

He has been a senior academic, researcher, and Professor in several countries, having worked at London University in the United Kingdom; McMaster University in Canada; Temple University in Philadelphia, USA.; and the University of Natal, in South Africa, with experience of State and private practice in each of these countries.

He was an early pioneer in various fields, including those of improving health sciences education, working with the dying and the bereaved, and the development of Hospice care; Suicidology; and PTSD and work with survivors of various forms of severe trauma, including survivors of torture and human rights abuses.

He has been a featured and plenary speaker at major world conferences in these and related fields, as well as working with many community and patient / family groups and in the development of better health services.

He is the author, co-author, or editor of some 70 books, published in Europe and America; and of hundreds of articles published in various countries.

Among his books have been : Medical Education : A Critical Approach ( 1972 ); The Facts of Death (1979); Psycholinguistics in Clinical Practice : The Languages of Illness and Healing (1981); and chapters and book sections such as : Self-Mutilation : Nothing to get so cut up about... in The Many Faces of Suicide, ed. NL Farberow (1980); The Therapeutic Uses of Truth, in The Doctor and the Dying Patient, ed. E. Wilkes (1982); The Malignant Metaphor : A Political Thanatology of AIDS, in : AIDS : Principles, Practices, and Policies, ed. Corless & Pittman-Lindeman (1989); Traumatic Stress and the Bruising of the Soul, and Bitter Waters : The effects on children of unrest and oppression, in : The Handbook of Traumatic Stress Syndromes, ed. Wilson and Raphael (1993); Gullible's Travels, or, The Importance of Being Multiple, in Dissociative Identity Disorder : Theoretical and Treatment Controversies, ed.. Cohen, Berzoff, & Elin (1995 ); The Truth of Suffering, In Death and Trauma, ed. Figley & Mazza (1997); and The Second Bullet : Transgenerational impact of trauma and conflict, in The International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, ed. Yael Danieli, (1998).

Among his life experiences, he has been trapped under gunfire at Beirut Airport during the Civil War in Lebanon; he was the keynote speaker when the very male double Nobel Prize Winner, Linus Pauling, was declared Woman of the Year; survived periods of death threats and assassination attempts; and served on the barricades in Paris during the 1968 revolutions, with the ladies of the Folies Bergere. These have helped him to be less surprised at the sort of things that turn up in the course of life, than those who have lived only in Ivory Towers.