Arthur Guirdham

After writing a couple of wartime thrillers he became increasingly interested in esoteric history and reincarnation. His books The Lake and the Castle (1976) and The Great Heresy: The History and Beliefs of the Cathars (1977) describe the Cathar faith. He also wrote on Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. Most successful, however, were his books on reincarnation, notably The Cathars and Reincarnation, which were translated into several languages and won him a loyal audience of enthusiasts and a significant role within British studies of the paranormal and alternative perspectives on mental illness.

Novelist and occult writer Colin Wilson was a friend of Guirdham and stayed at his house on a number of occasions. He wrote approvingly of Guirdham’s reincarnation claims. Wilson interviewed Guirdham for his book Strange Powers (1973).

He was born in Workington, Cumberland, into a working-class family of Huguenot descent – his father was a steel worker – yet he unusually gained a scholarship from technical school in Workington to Oxford University. He graduated from both Oxford University and Charing Cross. While pursuing a career in psychiatry, Guirdham was also a tireless writer, supported by the nearly full-time secretarial and editing assistance of his wife Mary. His book Disease and the Social System (1942) was a groundbreaking meditation on the connections between biological disease and industrialized food and the social stresses of modernity. His book The Theory of Disease (1957), mentioned in Brian Inglis’ History of Medicine, offered an early alternative perspective on mental illness and personality, including some ideas later taken up by the anti-psychiatry movement. Guirdham continue to write indefatigably in a variety of genres, including poetry.

Arthur Guirdham (1905–1992) was an English physician, psychiatrist, novelist, and writer on the Cathar sect, alternative medicine, ESP and reincarnation.