Geraint Ephraim

Geraint Ephraim

Known as Gary: Clinical Psychologist at Brynaneath Hospital, north Wales was my supervisor for four years when I was awarded a Joseph Rowntree Foundation Fellowship. He was the first person to use body language to communicate with people on the autistic spectrum, an approach he called ‘Augmented Mothering’, a name subsequently changed by Dave Hewett and Melanie Nind to ‘Intensive Interaction’. Unfortunately, Gary never really published details of what was to become a transformative way of getting in touch with people who were struggling to communicate. My own contribution has been to combine using body language to engage, with attention to sensory processing issues (Responsive Communication), since the anxiety triggered by hyper- and hypo- sensitivities sometimes override the capacity of one’s communication partner to attend , even to a familiar signal. In this photograph, we are walking his dog in a north Wales quarry. Rather aptly, Gary is looking into a deep black hole.