Dr. Alan Doyle's Retirement

Alan Doyle

I’ve thanked Dr. Alan Doyle already in three different forums for being instrumental  in sending me to the United Kingdom for a colleague training; it was the greatest and most important trip of my life, a trip to my favorite country outside of the United States. So I’ll say nothing further about that trip, except that it helped make both me and America great.

What I want to say tonight is that Alan also sent me on other trips—intellectual trips—on a quest to understand what it means to work in a clubhouse, what it means to help train and be trained by one’s fellow colleagues, and what it means to think for yourself and help others think for themselves.

Alan showed me that a clubhouse is not just for people who want to socialize or secure a job, not just for creative people, even, but for intellectuals, as well.  Members of clubhouses are entitled-perhaps even obliged to understand-why they attend a clubhouse and why clubhouses work.

Everyone in colleague training has a story about how “Rabbi” Alan Doyle engaged him or her in an intense, thoughtful and enlightening discussion about the clubhouse standards and encouraged us all to challenge the standards, challenge clubhouse tradition and challenge ourselves. He pushes members and staff and administrators and distant clubhouse bureaucrats to think about and understand Clubhouse and to work hard at developing their thinking and pursuing excellence in all endeavors.

To quote the rock’n’roll band, Rush:

“From the point of ignition

To the final drive

The point of the journey is not to arrive”

The point of a journey  with Alan Doyle is not to arrive. The journey itself –the intellectual process—is what we must value as opposed to Fountain House or ICCD or some other so-called authority telling us what to do and what to believe about clubhouses.

I went to Britain for an intellectual journey, not just for three weeks of tourism, and as a matter of fact, I did not do much touring: instead, I relished working alongside the Brits in their own journey toward building the best clubhouse.

Thank you, Alan, for the wonderful journey. And the best part about it all is that the journey will never be over, because the purpose is not to arrive.