On October 23, 1977, a diminutive Australian stepped onto the stage in New York. The audience saw an elderly woman whose regular uniform was a tweed skirt, twinset, spectacles, and sensible brown lace-up shoes with low heels. Her dark hair was permed and for adornment, she wore a string of pearls. At the age of 74, Dr Claire Weekes was the guest speaker at the 18th Annual Fall Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. She was an unusual choice for this gathering, as she ranked as an unqualified outsider. However, Weekes had one measurable claim to fame: her books on anxiety were a global sensation, hitting the bestseller lists in the US and the UK from the early 1960s onwards. She’d found a popular audience by identifying and describing the havoc nervous illness could create, and explaining and treating it in a fresh way. Weekes had […]