Dorothy Rowe

Dorothy Rowe0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Dorothy Rowe0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and two and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a psychologist. On her own admission, she spent the first 40 years of her life being unhappy, an experience she's put to good use in highly successful books about depression and how to deal with it. Born in Australia, she came to this country more than 30 years ago, where at the University of Sheffield she began to gain a reputation for studying psychology from the point of view of people's individual experiences rather than general theory. This is what's been the foundation of her success and the subject matter of her influential books. She admits to being a maverick along the way, but one whose controversial ideas have gradually received wide acceptance. The cure for depression, she says, is not pills but wisdom. She is Dorothy Rowe. And does that wisdom, Dorothy, come from within or without? Do you need a therapist to show you where it is or to tell you what it is, or can you do it yourself?

Dorothy Rowe1:24

Most people, as they get older, acquire wisdom from their experience. They we all learn from our experience, and we can learn from what other people tell us. We learn a lot from the conversations we have.

Presenter1:38

But if you get into that black hole of depression, can you get yourself out of it?

Dorothy Rowe1:42

I've seen hundreds of people do that.

Dorothy Rowe1:45

By by themselves and by talking to people and trying to understand how they see themselves and then realizing that

Dorothy Rowe1:59

The way we see ourselves in our world is a set of ideas. They're ideas that we've created.

Dorothy Rowe2:05

And we're free to change those ideas.

Presenter2:07

So the thesis is that you've put yourself in that black hole by perceiving yourself in the way that you do, and therefore you can get yourself out of it.

Dorothy Rowe2:16

It sounds cruel to say you put yourself in that hole, but it arises out of the way you see yourself and your world.

Dorothy Rowe2:25

And you've had very good reason for seeing yourself like that.

Dorothy Rowe2:29

Because you've had those kind of experiences from which you've drawn these ideas.

Presenter2:33

Yes. But that's been what's been controversial, as I understand it, about what you've said over the years. You have said depression is not genetic. It's not something you inherit. It's not a disease that you catch. It's not a chemical imbalance in the brain. It's you perceiving the world in a certain way and shooting yourself down, as we say, into that hole.

Dorothy Rowe2:53

Uh

Presenter2:53

Yes, and this

Dorothy Rowe2:54

Suppliers too.

Presenter2:54

Uh

Dorothy Rowe2:54

Everything that we we do

Presenter2:57

But why have professional psychologists over the years found that so difficult to accept? It sounds very obvious, you know, that it is a state brought about by the manner in which you view the world and your place in it.

Presenter3:10

Yeah.

Dorothy Rowe3:10

work on this whole

Dorothy Rowe3:12

question of why we behave as we do.

Dorothy Rowe3:16

The thinking among psychiatrists was that all behaviour could be explained in terms of bodily processes.

Dorothy Rowe3:24

And psychologists weren't interested in.

Dorothy Rowe3:30

depression or any of the major psychiatric disorders.

Dorothy Rowe3:34

that I came to England at a time

Dorothy Rowe3:37

when a particular way of working in psychology called personal construct psychology had been brought to England and I found in that body of work a way of presenting my ideas. Now this way of working has become ordinary now.

Dorothy Rowe3:56

And the basis of it is that what determines our behaviour isn't what happens to us, but how we interpret what happens to us.

Presenter4:05

I want to pursue that with you, but let's pause. Tell me about your first record.

Dorothy Rowe4:09

Whenever I hear Ella Fitzgerald sing Every Time We Say Goodbye, I remember those glorious times when I was in love.

Dorothy Rowe4:19

And when the world

Dorothy Rowe4:20

looks so different when your beloved is in front of you, everything shines, and when he goes away, everything turns grey.

Speaker 14:30

There's no

Dorothy Rowe4:31

Love some finer, but how strange the change from major to minor every time we say goodbye

Dorothy Rowe4:50

Uh

Speaker 24:50

Yeah.

Presenter5:00

Ella Fitzgerald, and every time we say goodbye. Having said, though, that each case is unique, which is what we were saying that that is your thesis, you are prepared to make some generalizations, aren't you? Because you say there's a pattern, and that pattern, that recipe, if you like, for depression, begins in childhood.

Dorothy Rowe5:16

Yes. It begins in childhood when

Dorothy Rowe5:21

The toddler

Dorothy Rowe5:22

ceases to think of himself as being quite acceptable.

Dorothy Rowe5:26

You know, by the time we're toddlers we've learnt that you have to work hard to be good.

Dorothy Rowe5:31

And once you've learnt that, and become an expert in being good,

Dorothy Rowe5:37

You've laid the cornerstone for the prison of depression.

Presenter5:40

So in later life, when something awful happens to you, if your your spouse leaves you or you get the sack or whatever it is, you immediately think it's because I'm bad.

Dorothy Rowe5:45

This

Presenter5:50

Yeah.

Dorothy Rowe5:50

That's right, because good people always blame themselves.

Dorothy Rowe5:55

So when a disaster happens to a good person,

Dorothy Rowe5:59

A good person doesn't say oh, well it just happened by chance or it was somebody else's fault a good person says it was my fault.

Presenter6:02

Yeah.

Presenter6:08

And if you believe that strongly enough, you tumble into the hell.

Dorothy Rowe6:12

I live at Br

Presenter6:12

Russian, yes?

Dorothy Rowe6:12

The way to turn sadness into depression.

Dorothy Rowe6:17

is to blame yourself.

Dorothy Rowe6:19

for the disaster that's befallen you.

Presenter6:22

Having said all of that, when people get depressed, you know, if they can then go to the doctor and get themselves labelled, you know, clinically depressed, it's almost as if that's a safe haven, isn't it? That actually you are on firm ground. It's called rock bottom, but you're on firm ground, rather than flapping about in the wind not knowing quite why you feel so miserable.

Dorothy Rowe6:36

But you know

Dorothy Rowe6:42

Nowadays, diagnosis of depression is very popular, so a lot of people are getting it when actually

Dorothy Rowe6:49

they're deeply sad or they're extremely anxious. Because there's a big difference between unhappiness and depression. It's huge difference. When we're unhappy, other people can actually comfort us. We can feel the warmth of their comfort.

Dorothy Rowe7:03

But when we're depressed, we've turned against ourselves and we hate ourselves. And when other people try to comfort us, nothing gets through to us. The experience of depression

Dorothy Rowe7:16

is being in a prison.

Dorothy Rowe7:19

Intellectually, you know you're still in the same sort of world that you've always been in, but in terms of what you're experiencing, there's a barrier between you and everything else, everybody else. And when you're in the prison of depression, it's horrible because you're totally on your own, but you are

Dorothy Rowe7:40

Excluding on the other side of that wall is all the chaos that's threatening to overwhelm you.

Presenter7:47

Tell me about yourself.

Dorothy Rowe7:47

Uh

Presenter7:47

Second record.

Dorothy Rowe7:49

Well, my second record is the first record I ever listened to on my grandmother's wind-up grammar phone called The Runaway Train.

Dorothy Rowe7:58

And I'd look at the picture above her mantelpiece, and it was of a coach and horses, and at the front, sitting beside the coachman, was a young boy, and I'd make up lots of stories about him, and they were all about escaping. And of course my life has not been very much about escaping.

Speaker 18:18

Twas in the year of 89 on that old Chicago line when the winter wind was blowing shrill.

Speaker 18:27

The rails were froze, the wheels were cold, and then the air brakes wouldn't hold, and Number Nine came roaring down the hill. Whoa, the runaway train came down the track, and she blew.

Speaker 18:39

The runaway train came down the track and she blew

Speaker 18:43

The runaway train come down the track, the whistle wide and the throttle back, and she blew.

Presenter8:49

Vernon Douhart singing The Runaway Train, which equals Escape, which is what you, Dorothy Rowe, aged five, living in the seaside town of Newcastle in South East Australia, wanted to do. What did you want to escape from?

Dorothy Rowe9:00

Uh

Dorothy Rowe9:01

My mother.

Dorothy Rowe9:03

My mother was a very difficult woman. Years later, when I was working as a psychologist and talking to lots of depressed women, I kept meeting her. And I came to realize that that was Ella's problem. The family never said she was depressed, but the whole family, not just my father and my sister and myself, but all her sisters and her mother, everybody.

Dorothy Rowe9:29

We all lived on the principle, don't upset Ella.

Presenter9:33

And how did it affect you as a child?

Dorothy Rowe9:34

Because I was the youngest and I was there with her.

Dorothy Rowe9:39

and two other people.

Dorothy Rowe9:41

She was really lovely, very beautiful and very sweet and charming.

Dorothy Rowe9:47

But she took her rages out on me. How? Oh, beating me and

Dorothy Rowe9:53

Winter gets tremendously upset.

Dorothy Rowe9:56

She would say she was going to kill me and then

Dorothy Rowe9:58

kill herself and um

Speaker 19:59

Um

Dorothy Rowe10:01

And did she ever show you any love?

Dorothy Rowe10:03

It's a funny thing. I've I've thought about this a lot, and I'm still not sure. When she was

Dorothy Rowe10:09

Quite old.

Dorothy Rowe10:11

and I'd cease to be frightened of it.

Dorothy Rowe10:13

We had the only intimate conversation we ever had, and it was very brief.

Dorothy Rowe10:18

And she just said

Dorothy Rowe10:20

Well, we Sneddons, that was her maiden name, we Sneddons never show our feelings. And I said, Mum, you showed your anger And she just smiled at that and that was

Presenter10:31

What about your father? What role did he?

Dorothy Rowe10:31

What do we

Dorothy Rowe10:33

Playing all of this, because he was a salesman and he was obviously quite a sociable chap. Oh, yes, he was just wonderful.

Presenter10:35

But

Dorothy Rowe10:38

But he told me when I was in my early twenties how disappointed he was that I was a girl, and how he had to make an effort to love me.

Dorothy Rowe10:48

when I was a baby.

Dorothy Rowe10:49

But I didn't feel that was bad because my father tried to love everybody.

Presenter10:54

It sounds completely miserable and awful.

Presenter10:58

Obviously, as you say, you've thought about it a lot. I wonder I mean, can I just ask you this? It's kind of role reversal here. I seem to be the therapist. I don't mean to be, but I wonder would a would a fly on the wall

Speaker 111:04

It seemed to be the Sarah.

Presenter11:09

at the time, back up everything, the sort of picture you've just painted? Or would they say, Well, hang on, this is just your perception of it In fact, they were just your mother was just a not very demonstrative woman, couldn't show her love, but it was there really.

Dorothy Rowe11:24

Yeah.

Dorothy Rowe11:25

They might well say that, but uh what they'd hear was a a kind of a constant

Dorothy Rowe11:31

criticism. My sister has talked to me about

Dorothy Rowe11:34

How she

Dorothy Rowe11:35

growing up was terribly nervous because my of the way my mother would always comment on the state of her hair or whether her breath smelt and things like that. And it really wasn't until I was working

Dorothy Rowe11:49

As I

Dorothy Rowe11:50

educational psychologist with disturbed children and working in child guidance clinics, that it dawned on me that had child guidance clinics been around when I was a child, somebody would have sent my mother and me there.

Presenter12:06

Or you to put up your hand and say, please, can I please?

Dorothy Rowe12:06

You just put up your hand and said, please, can I please?

Dorothy Rowe12:09

Record number three.

Dorothy Rowe12:11

Well, not everything in my school days was bad. And one of the things at Newcastle Girls High School was that I learnt to dance, and I just love dancing. So

Dorothy Rowe12:26

On this island I'm going to have Fredester and the Continental, and I shall dance.

Speaker 212:32

Beautiful music

Speaker 212:35

Dangerous rhythm

Speaker 212:39

It's something daring.

Speaker 212:40

The content at all.

Speaker 212:42

A way of dancing is really ultra-new. It's very subtle.

Speaker 212:47

The continental

Speaker 212:49

Because it does what you want it to do. It has a passion.

Speaker 212:54

The continental

Speaker 212:56

An invitation to moonlight and romance. It's quite the fashion, the continental Fredestaire and the CO

Presenter13:02

Fredestaire and the Continental sweeping you across the beach there. Wonderful. When did psychology enter your life then, Dorothy? When did you actually think, That's the word, that's the subject, that's what I want to pursue?

Dorothy Rowe13:15

I sort of fell into it. I went to university expecting to major in English and history. When I got there I found it terribly boring, and psychology was one of the subjects I had to do with, and it was marginally less boring.

Dorothy Rowe13:34

So that I ended up majoring in that.

Presenter13:37

The seeds of

Presenter13:39

the maverick were in you, obviously, because you you you know, you were o you were openly critical then, I think, of the kind of uh education you were receiving. I mean, you weren't flattened by this childhood of yours, were you? You you sound as if you were quite punchy.

Dorothy Rowe13:52

As anyone who grew up in a difficult childhood knows, you either go under or you fight back.

Dorothy Rowe14:00

And I always think it's better to fight back.

Presenter14:02

But you've made you've made this statement that you were m more or less unhappy for forty years. There were obviously bursts of happiness. I mean, presumably when you first got married, when you had your son, Edward. But it was really when you went back to work after that that you you found your métier because you started to work with emotionally disturbed children.

Dorothy Rowe14:20

Yeah.

Speaker 114:21

Uh

Presenter14:22

What was revolutionary about what you brought to that work with those kids?

Dorothy Rowe14:27

I was very fortunate I was a liaison.

Dorothy Rowe14:31

Psychologist to a children's unit at Northride Psychiatric Hospital.

Dorothy Rowe14:37

And that unit was run by a wonderful woman, Dr. Sarah Williams.

Dorothy Rowe14:42

She saw every child as an individual. She didn't see them as cases of mental illness.

Dorothy Rowe14:49

And when I came to England I expected psychiatry to be the same, and it was not. The case conferences were all about diagnosis and treatment with drugs and A C T.

Presenter15:02

And not visiting these these patients, the clients, which are whatever you call them, in their own homes, which is what you do, isn't it?

Dorothy Rowe15:09

Yes, when I was working in Sydney I didn't have an office, so I would see the children and the parents in their own home. And one boy I've never forgotten was this lad who was supposed to be school phobic.

Dorothy Rowe15:23

And all the emphasis was on why he was fr frightened of school.

Dorothy Rowe15:27

But I discovered that there was Grannie at home.

Dorothy Rowe15:31

and the boy eventually told me that Granny would say to him in the morning

Dorothy Rowe15:36

If you go to school today, I'll die.

Dorothy Rowe15:41

Now I wouldn't have felt I didn't even know Granny's existence until I went there.

Dorothy Rowe15:47

Like what number four?

Dorothy Rowe15:49

It's um Ella Fitzgerald singing Just One of Those Things. Now this was really growing up when I realized that if you fall in love, well, love comes to an end, and it is just one of those things.

Speaker 116:05

That our love of fair was too hot not to cool down So goodbye, dear and mamma here

Dorothy Rowe16:21

There's hoping we'd meet now and then. It was great fun, but it was just one of those things.

Presenter16:35

Ella Fitzgerald and just one of those things. Is that how you felt, Dorothy, when you turned your back on Australia and your marriage and everything and came to this country? You sort of put it behind it, it was just one of those things. I'm moving on.

Dorothy Rowe16:46

It was the best thing to do. It was.

Dorothy Rowe16:49

quite traumatic and very scary'cause I didn't have a job and the only money I had I'd spent on a boat fare coming over, so, um, that was quite scary.

Presenter17:00

And you brought your small son, who would have been, what, about nine or ten at the time.

Dorothy Rowe17:03

Uh he was nine at the time. Yes.

Presenter17:05

But one of the reasons you were attracted to coming was that you knew that your type of psychology was beginning to catch on here.

Dorothy Rowe17:12

No, not really. It was there was a change in the kind of research that psychologists were doing. And I'd been corresponding with Monty Shapiro at the Institute of Psychiatry, great psychologist, and he said in a letter one day, Why don't you come over here? There are lots of jobs.

Presenter17:33

Yeah.

Dorothy Rowe17:33

But

Presenter17:33

Now you would have been thirty eight when you did that. You say that you were unhappy for forty years. Was there a moment then, after you'd arrived, when you realized I am no longer unhappy?

Dorothy Rowe17:44

Yeah.

Dorothy Rowe17:46

It crept up on me slowly.

Dorothy Rowe17:48

But I remember one day when I was running the Department of Clinical Psychology in Lincolnshire, I walked out the tour of the department and I saw the daisies floating on the grass like I've never seen them before.

Dorothy Rowe18:05

And I was aware that I

Dorothy Rowe18:07

Felt different and the world was different because that was that was happiness.

Presenter18:12

And was part of the reason for that happiness was yes, you'd established a new life, but also, as we say, you were beginning to have your kind of theory of

Presenter18:21

individual psychology being acceptable, and you had discovered this personal construct psychology.

Dorothy Rowe18:27

Well, I was doing things which I knew were real.

Dorothy Rowe18:32

And I knew that people

Dorothy Rowe18:35

were getting something from it.

Presenter18:37

But this personal construct psychology doesn't have a leader. There is no Jung, there is no Freud. Wh why don't you have a leader? I mean, do you just sort of make secret signs to each other across the past?

Dorothy Rowe18:48

There's a whole collection of us and we're lovely people and we have lots of conferences. But it's the ultimate democracy that each of us sees the world in our own individual way.

Presenter19:02

But you do put labels on on groups of people, don't you? You know i conventional psychology, I think, accepts that there are extroverts and introverts. You just give them different labels. You call them people persons and what have I achieved today, persons.

Dorothy Rowe19:16

Yes, and I use the words extrovert and introvert.

Dorothy Rowe19:19

I didn't discover anything brand new. All the

Dorothy Rowe19:23

Great theories of about why people behave as they do. You know, Freud, Jung.

Dorothy Rowe19:30

I think all of those people

Dorothy Rowe19:33

came to the conclusion that the human race divides into two groups. There are people persons, extroverts, people for whom their relationships with others are the most important part of their life.

Dorothy Rowe19:46

And the rest of us are introverts and our t I'm one. Our top priority is having a sense of some kind of achievement and order. And you agree with that? That's what I found. I didn't expect to find that. I thought I expected to find this complete individuality

Dorothy Rowe20:07

All over.

Dorothy Rowe20:08

and I got a great shock.

Presenter20:10

So doesn't it contradict your thesis then? Isn't it proof that there is a neurological or genetic basis for the way we are?

Dorothy Rowe20:11

But does this

Dorothy Rowe20:18

We are all individuals, but we all we're all bodies. We're born with potential.

Dorothy Rowe20:24

But what happens to that potential depends on

Dorothy Rowe20:29

how we interpret that potential.

Dorothy Rowe20:32

For instance, I've got a lung disease, bronchiacasis, probably genetic.

Dorothy Rowe20:37

But I'm as well as I am.

Dorothy Rowe20:39

First of all, because I think I'm valuable and I'm going to live as long as I can. And secondly,

Dorothy Rowe20:46

I'm highly organised and somewhat obsessional. I carry out all the health routines.

Presenter20:53

And you do that because you're an introvert, because you look after yourself, and that's how you were born.

Dorothy Rowe20:53

And you just

Dorothy Rowe20:59

I was born as an introvert, but as an introvert I still had to learn.

Dorothy Rowe21:04

how I was going to value myself.

Dorothy Rowe21:07

and how organized I was going to be. And the skills that I learnt in being organized means that I look after myself and I do a lot better with bronchiacasis than somebody who's got the same disease but who doesn't value himself or who is totally disorganized.

Presenter21:28

Record number five.

Dorothy Rowe21:29

This is the the theme from the most wonderful television series I've ever seen called Sea Change. It was made in Australia for some reason. It's never been shown here.

Dorothy Rowe21:41

It's about a woman who loses everything in her life and she packs up her children and off they go to start a new life.

Dorothy Rowe21:52

Well, some echoes in my life, but it's a wonderful series and when I'm on this island and needing to watch television, I'll play one of the episodes of Sea Change through my mind's eye.

Speaker 222:05

Don't wanna live in the city My friends tell me I'm changing

Speaker 222:16

The smell of salt the air is what I'm chasing

Dorothy Rowe22:27

Probably think I'm mad

Presenter22:33

Wendy Morrison and Richard Pleasant singing the theme to the Australian television series Sea Change. So it was in your forties, Dorothy Rowe, that that slow process, as you've described, of discovering happiness gained ground and then you founded and became head of a department of clinical psychology in the east of England and then after that you started writing your books about depression. You really found a gap in the market there. I mean they had huge success, didn't they?

Dorothy Rowe22:59

There's been very little written about depression that

Dorothy Rowe23:04

gets across to people their own experience. So many, many people have said to me in my book, Depression, The Way Out of Your Prison, you wrote that book about me. And it's I'm being told this by somebody I've only

Presenter23:16

But what what everyone listening to you will want to know is did you send a book to your mother?

Dorothy Rowe23:23

I sent my first book, The Experience of Depression, to her, and I dedicated it.

Dorothy Rowe23:29

To my parents

Dorothy Rowe23:30

'Cause I wanted their names to go on.

Dorothy Rowe23:33

And she never mentioned it to me.

Dorothy Rowe23:37

And my sister told me that

Dorothy Rowe23:39

She hadn't seen the dedication until my sister pointed it out to her, so I don't think she'd even opened it.

Dorothy Rowe23:45

But did

Presenter23:45

Did you ever? Travel back to Australia in the wake of all of this and confront your mother. Did you ever say to her, You made my life hell?

Dorothy Rowe23:57

I was here for ten years without the money to go back to Australia. When I went back, my mother was old and there was no point. I've often discussed this with my clients, you know. Should my client go and confront his parents?

Dorothy Rowe24:13

And in some cases, if it's not so much a confrontation, but a query.

Dorothy Rowe24:18

You know, did this really happen? Some parents are wonderful. They explain and they say, yes, that did happen. I'm sorry.

Dorothy Rowe24:26

But in some cases

Dorothy Rowe24:28

There can be no explanation from the parent.

Dorothy Rowe24:32

Because the parent doesn't understand what has happened.

Dorothy Rowe24:36

You know most parents

Dorothy Rowe24:39

try to do their best for their children.

Dorothy Rowe24:41

and a lot of parents.

Dorothy Rowe24:43

Cause their children a great deal of distress when the parent feels that they're acting out of the child's best interests.

Dorothy Rowe24:51

I'm only beating you for your own good, darling.

Dorothy Rowe24:55

Record number six.

Dorothy Rowe24:58

When my marriage was breaking up, I was really into into the great

Dorothy Rowe25:03

Tchaikovsky, Pathetique, that used to cheer me up enormously, you know, all the passion of the classics. But now I like the music of Mozart and Schubert, the poignancy rather than the passion. And Mozart has that wonderful elegance and clarity that good scientific theories have.

Presenter26:22

Part of the third movement of Mozart's piano sonata in C major, played by Vladimir Horowitz. One of your m chief guidelines for for being happy, Dorothy, is looking after your friends. You must therefore, it seems to me, approve of young people today, who seem to me anyway to be much more supportive of their friends, much more tactile. You know, whether it's on Big Brother or Pop Idol, they are hugging each other, supporting each other the whole time.

Dorothy Rowe26:47

Friendship's become tremendously important to us, or it's always been important, but

Dorothy Rowe26:52

Now there's a much greater realization how much we need our friends and we need to look after them and we need to contact them, as you say, by hugging them and kissing and being close in that way.

Dorothy Rowe27:07

But also in understanding that if you want to have a good friend you have to be a good friend.

Dorothy Rowe27:13

And of course a lot of older people don't understand that.

Presenter27:16

So what what are the guidelines for being happy? Is there a recipe for happiness? Looking after your friends, looking after yourself, obviously.

Dorothy Rowe27:23

Uh

Dorothy Rowe27:23

Well, first of all, to realize that you if you make happiness your goal, then it won't happen because happiness is always a byproduct.

Dorothy Rowe27:33

First of all, you must value and accept yourself.

Dorothy Rowe27:37

And if you value and accept yourself, you won't be frightened of other people.

Dorothy Rowe27:41

means you've got good relationships, lots of good friends.

Dorothy Rowe27:45

And you look after yourself physically and as a person. You know, you'll make sure that people don't walk all over you.

Dorothy Rowe27:53

And when you value and accept yourself, you feel.

Dorothy Rowe27:57

that you're part of the world, part of society, part of nature.

Dorothy Rowe28:01

And so you have that lovely sense of being joined to everything. It's the opposite of being depressed.

Dorothy Rowe28:07

Equal number seven.

Dorothy Rowe28:10

I find it very curious that a young man born in a different country in another century

Dorothy Rowe28:17

understood how I experience being alive, just that sense of being alive. And I find that in Schubert. His unfinished symphony has got that wonderful

Dorothy Rowe28:31

sweetness and mystery of being alive.

Presenter29:34

Part of the second movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, number eight in B minor, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Carrion. Well, now I presume uh a psychologist would know exactly how to cope alone on a desert island. How would you do it, Dorothy?

Dorothy Rowe29:49

I've decided that this must be

Dorothy Rowe29:51

an island in the Maldives or the Great Barrier Reef. If I went to the Hebrides I'd be dead in a week.

Dorothy Rowe29:57

And yes, of course I can go.

Presenter29:59

Can you? Can you ward off the panic attacks when you hear the rustling in the bushes?

Dorothy Rowe30:04

The desert islands I'm familiar with don't have many bushes to rustle. So now

Presenter30:10

Well, you know, even if there are no bushes, there's something that's going to come in the night to get you, surely.

Dorothy Rowe30:15

I never have any fears of something coming in the night to get me.

Dorothy Rowe30:20

I I very much live within myself. I have a whole fund of stories to tell myself, conversations to have with my friends. I'll be fine. You see yourself through.

Dorothy Rowe30:33

Well, I expect to, because I think I could manage reasonably well on a desert island, and the kind of island I'm thinking about. It will only be a week or two before a boat goes by loaded with Japanese tourists, their cameras at the ready, and I'll be rescued.

Dorothy Rowe30:50

Last record.

Dorothy Rowe30:53

The last record is uh Schubert Symphony number nine because it is so alive and so wonderful, and it's all that passion of living

Dorothy Rowe31:05

rushing on and what lies ahead and what's happening now and

Dorothy Rowe31:10

And beautiful things in it I can dance to.

Presenter32:11

The end of Schubert's Symphony No. nine, the Great C major, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Dorothy Rowe32:20

Oh, the great C major,'cause it's got everything in it.

Presenter32:25

You've got the Bible to read, you've got the complete works of Shakespeare to read. What else do you want?

Dorothy Rowe32:30

I'm always worried that I haven't got enough to read.

Dorothy Rowe32:33

So I'll take a book I've just bought, The Oxford Companion to the Body, edited by Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett. And it's a beautiful, thick book, full of stuff I can learn, lots of interesting stories from history, beautiful pictures.

Dorothy Rowe32:51

And what about your luxury?

Dorothy Rowe32:53

This will be my snorkeling suit my son gave me a special outfit to ward off the sun's rays, beautiful, well fitting goggles with my glasses prescription, and I shall just snorkel my time away.

Presenter33:08

Dorothy Rowe, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Dorothy Rowe33:18

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Dorothy Rowe34:06

Uh