One of my biggest surprises in recent years was in my study of neuropsychology cue notes (prepared for quick reference in court) as well as numerous forensic reports that I presented as expert evidence in the 1980s. The element of surprise arose from the fact that I had been unaware of the range of personal documents that are still in my possession. I was led towards these relics of my past working life by a belief that it would be possible to find answers to some pressing questions I was grappling with during the preparatory stages of my work on this book.

I was taking a hard look at some aspects of my professional work as a psychologist during the period in which I worked at the University of the Witwatersrand. This is also the time when I found myself drawn into forensic psychology – the use of psychology in the preparation and presentation of expert evidence in the courts.

This chapter and the next deal specifically with my work as a clinical psychologist and expert witness, what I like to describe as ‘being in the soup’ because of my encounters with the face of South African political violence and apartheid justice. From 1986 onwards my life-writing work was placed in abeyance largely as a result of the rapidly changing political environment in our country and the resulting pressing professional demands on me.

The first hint of a professional connection between psychology and the courts occurred unexpectedly after my return from the US in 1975. The occasion was a consultation I had in Pretoria with David Soggot, a senior and well-known former South African advocate, then resident in the UK. He and the instructing attorney were preparing for one of the historic political trials of the 1970s, that of members of the South African Students Organisation (Saso). The accused were imprisoned in what was then known as the Pretoria Central Prison. Soggot, as he often did, was testing the waters at our meeting, as part of his work of consulting people like me who had written about black consciousness in South Africa.