Maurice Nicoll was a British psychiatrist, author and noted Fourth Way teacher. He is best known for his Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, a multi-volume collection of talks he gave to his study groups.

Life and work

Nicoll was born at the Manse in Kelso, Scotland

Kelso, Scotland

Kelso is a market town and civil parish in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. It lies where the rivers Tweed and Teviot have their confluence...

, the son of William Robertson Nicoll

William Robertson Nicoll

Sir William Robertson Nicoll CH was a Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.Nicoll was born in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Church minister...

, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He studied science at Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 before going on to St. Bartholomew's Hospital and then to Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Zurich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

 where he became a colleague of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung's psychological revelations and his own work with Jung during this period left a lasting influence on Nicoll as a young man.

After his Army Medical Service in the 1914 War, in Gallipoli

Gallipoli

The Gallipoli peninsula is located in Turkish Thrace , the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east. Gallipoli derives its name from the Greek "Καλλίπολις" , meaning "Beautiful City"...

 and Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

, he returned to England to become a psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

. In 1921 he met Petr Demianovich Ouspensky, a student of G. I. Gurdjieff

G. I. Gurdjieff

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff according to Gurdjieff's principles and instructions, or the "Fourth Way."At one point he described his teaching as "esoteric Christianity."...

 and he also became a pupil of Gurdjieff in the following year. In 1923 when Gurdjieff closed down his institute, Nicoll joined P.D. Ouspensky's group. In 1931 he followed Ouspensky's advice and started his own study groups in England. This was done through a program of work devoted to passing on the ideas that Nicoll had gathered and passing them on through his talks given weekly to his own study groups.

Many of these talks were recorded verbatim and documented in a six-volume series of texts compiled in his books Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

Nicoll also authored books and stories about his experiences in the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 using the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Martin Swayne.

Though Nicoll advocated the theories of the Fourth Way he also maintained interests in essential Christian teachings, in Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism , is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius Saccas...

 and in dream interpretation

Dream interpretation

Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams. In many ancient societies, such as those of Egypt and Greece, dreaming was considered a supernatural communication or a means of divine intervention, whose message could be unravelled by people with certain powers...

 until the end of his life.

Books by Nicoll

• Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Boston: Shambhala, 1996, and Samuel Weiser Inc., 1996, ISBN 0-87728-910-7 (6 volumes)
• Dream Psychology
• Living Time and the Integration of the Life
• The Mark
• The New Man : An Interpretation of Some Parables and Miracles of Christ
• Informal Work Talks and Teachings
• In Mesopotamia (under the pen-name of 'Martin Swayne')

Short stories by Nicoll under the pen-name Martin Swayne

• "A Game of Consequences", London Magazine, October 1911
• "The Black and Gold Curtain", London Magazine, April 1912
• "The Mystery of the 'Vathek'", Pall Mall Magazine, January 1913
• "Life-Like", The Strand Magazine, February 1913
• "The Piano-tuner", London Magazine, April 1913
• "Sir Clifford's Gorilla", The Strand Magazine, July 1913
• "The Alabaster Jar", The Strand Magazine, August 1913
• "The Flying Log", London Magazine, November 1913
• "The Corot Landscape", The Strand Magazine, November 1913
• "Half a Ton of Dynamite", The Strand Magazine, January 1916
• "The Sleep-Beam", The Strand Magazine, March 1918
• "The Whistling", Lloyd's Magazine, October 1918
• "An Awkward Situation", The Strand Magazine, July 1924
• "A Sense of the Future", The Strand Magazine, August 1924
• "An Obvious Case", The Strand Magazine, October 1924

External links

• An Interpretation of Some Parables and Miracles of Christ