Retreat and go on: Bob Johnson on William Tuke
‘Those Parkhurst prisoners taught me that we are all born lovable, sociable and nonviolent.’
William Tuke (1732-1822), who founded The Retreat, still holds two surprises for us. The first is the breathtaking simplicity of his approach; the second is its extraordinary success. Who would have guessed that the way to cure wayward people was to treat them as you wanted them to be, not to castigate them for making no sense, for acting unsocially, or for failing to benefit from harmonious interactions with the rest of us?
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