Author's Page

Leon Petchkovsky is a psychiatrist and a Jungian analyst who has done a lot of work with brain functional imagery, using fMRI and QEEG. Hence his deep interest in developmental neuropsychology.

In decades of work in remote disadvantaged Indigenous communities in Central Australia Leon was mentored by senior ngangkari (traditional healers) who helped him encounter the Wati Kanyilpai Dreaming. This is about a male Dreamtime Ancestor whose task is to nurture the nurturers, to look after those who look after people, animals, and the land.

In the last 2 decades, massive research in our understanding of how the brain grows in the first three years of life confirms the vital importance of good nurturance in this period of life. The negative consequences of nurturance failure are vast. At the collective level, we see high rates of educational retardation, violence, crime, substance abuse, physical illness, and relationships problems, including a poor capacity to nurture children. Thus these problems are passed on in transgenerational cascades of misery.

Childhood trauma is a global problem. If we could only begin to address it properly, there would be massive positive flow-on effects