Robin Maslen

There was great shock and sadness when members at the ITAA Membership Meeting in Johannesburg were informed of Robin Maslen’s death. George Kohlrieser had just learned of it through an e-mail he had received from Ken Mellor (who was with Robin and his family in Australia). Robin had died only hours before after being hospitalized with complications following chemotherapy for the liver and stomach cancer he had been diagnosed with only a few weeks previously. Those gathered paid tribute to Robin with 2 minutes of silence, followed by shared memories of a man who has played many important roles in the ITAA over the years.

Then on Sunday, at the conference closing ceremonies, ITAA Vice President of Operations C. Suriyaprakash officially presented Robin’s Muriel James Living Principles Award, after which a DVD Robin had made of his acceptance speech was shown. Following that, Servaas van Beekum gave a short eulogy describing the reasons why he, Lorna Johnston, and Charlotte Daellenbach had nominated Robin for the James Award and then time was provided for people in the audience to share memories and feelings about Robin.

We all grieve the death of such a special person and someone who gave so much to this organization. We present here the text of Robin’s acceptance speech, Servaas’s comments, and the eulogy Ken Mellor delivered at Robin’s funeral.
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My Dear TA Colleagues,

What a great delight and surprise to be advised that the ITAA Board of Trustees had approved the granting of a Muriel James Living Principles Award to me.

Muriel has been a long-time friend, so it is with much humbleness that I gratefully accept this award in the hope that others in our worldwide network may be also encouraged to follow in Muriel’s footsteps.

I am sorry not to be able to be at the South African conference, and by the time you hear this very short acceptance speech, I can imagine that you are all very well primed with good feelings to have a great last night. I wonder if there will be any African drumming? Remember, don’t burn out on re-entry!

I am sure that you have all heard or will hear from Servaas about why I was chosen, so I won’t labour that. What I would like to say that when I joined ITAA way back, I did it to see what I could get from the organization. Wrong start.

Over the years, and along with my involvement in many other voluntary organizations, I have adopted the attitude that you only get out of the ITAA what you put into it. Hence, my organizational energy went into lots of things that I enjoy giving to others. Not all have the time and money, of course, to do this, but everyone, wherever on the globe, can find a way to not only do therapy, education, counseling, or organizational work, but also by the way they conduct themselves, to show this amazing sense of OKness, something that hits first-timers at a TA conference like a massive shock to the system.

So, my very dear friends, I miss you all and wish I were there, but as Mary Goulding would advise, “Wishes and hopes are not a good plan of action.”

I am in great spirits with chemo and so far so good.

Love to all, Robin Maslen
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Remembering and Honoring Robin Maslen - by Servaas van Beekum

When we were e-mailing with Robin Maslen in late July about how to conduct the celebration of his Muriel James Living Principles Award at the ITAA conference in Johannesburg, we all knew that he was terminally ill and might have only a few weeks left. We did not think that he would pass away as he did, just a few days after recording a video with his acceptance speech, which was shown at the award ceremony.

Robin passed away in the middle of the ITAA conference, a past president (1992-1993) leaving us, while at the same time, current president Gianpiero Petriglieri could not be at this gathering because he was expecting his first child. Birth and death so close, together with the celebration of Robin Maslen’s life. It was a powerful and moving experience of what this conference held together and what the international transactional analysis community is capable of containing. And we took this experience as a final gift of the generous man that Robin was.

An article in the August 2008 Script announcing Robin’s Muriel James Award described how he “by accident” enrolled in a week at the Gouldings’ Mt. Madonna in 1972 and his lifelong journey with transactional analysis took off. From an Australian perspective, we can say that Robin put transactional analysis on the map there, just as he put Australia on the map of the international transactional analysis community.

There are two aspects about his life that I would like to mention here. First, there was Robin’s generosity of heart. He was involved in his home country in many projects to improve the life of individuals, special target groups, and whole communities. He brought transactional analysis into the legal system to be used with young offenders, with remarkable success. He promoted programs for the empowerment of people in a variety of areas, including industry, government, voluntary organizations, parent groups, local communities, and churches as well as professionals in helping and managerial roles. Robin contributed not only by his ongoing commitment to the course, he also invested and donated money generously to several of these projects.

Second, there was Robin’s capacity as a containing force. In our own ITAA, Robin served on the board of trustees, first as a trustee, then as secretary, and eventually as president. I had the privilege of serving as president-elect when he was president. In his own astute way, Robin was my mentor into ITAA politics at the time. What I appreciated about him most were his sense of clarity about boundaries, his drive for honesty in professional relationships, his refusal to be ruled by unprocessed animosity, and his down-to-earth approach to getting things done. As past president, Robin took up roles as chair of the ITAA ethics committee and bylaws committee. In these capacities, he guided the ITAA through some hard and challenging times, especially when the basis of our bylaws and the integrity of our governance needed to be restored. When good and up-to-date bylaws carry an organization and make an organization work, Robin was the personification of that. As such, he contained and held both the ITAA and the Training and Certification Council over the past 15 years. He did this from a genuine OK-OK position, with humor and tenacity, as a true no-nonsense Aussie. We will miss him dearly for all of this.

This Muriel James Living Principles Award is a celebration of Robin’s life. The fact that this celebration coincides with his death is a subtle reminder of the inevitability of the three facts of life: that there is a beginning and an end and a life of undetermined length in between. Ken Mellor has reminded us that for his life, all Robin wanted was to be remembered as a fun-loving, upbeat guy from down under who had lived every moment to the fullest.

Servaas van Beekum

Servaas van Beekum is a past president of the ITAA. He can be reached at servaasvanbeekum@bigpond.com

Eulogy for Robin Maslen - by Ken Mellor

I had the honor of being one of six people to speak at Robin Maslen’s funeral on 12 August 2008 in Adelaide, Australia, a privilege guided by the strict instructions he left. We were all to talk for a maximum of 5 minutes each. His rationale: He had been bored by people at funerals going on and on, and he didn’t want that to happen at his. However, as I pointed out to Val, his wife, 5 minutes was far too short a time to do justice to a man like Robin, so she relented and allowed me 10!

We are here today to honor Robin Maslen and to celebrate his life. We are also here to get closure on the loss we are each experiencing and to say good-bye.

I met Robin over 37 years ago. He was a man of stature, someone who touched the lives of many thousands of people directly and many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, indirectly.

First and last, he was a family man. He loved his family—a love he expressed in ways typical of the era in which he was raised, where love was demonstrated by providing for the family rather than through statements of affection. It was love, nonetheless. I count myself greatly blessed that Rob and Val Maslen opened their hearts and lives to me and mine, so that we, like many here today, became members of their family, too.

Once he retired, he devoted much of his time to Val and his children and grandchildren. It was a delight to watch his heart melting through those years as he risked more and more of the “touchy freely stuff” he was so good at helping the rest of us to engage in.

Then, too, Robin was an innovator, a man of vision, often seeing needs and trends long before others did. And he was an activist. He was probably most content when he was contributing to others. He had a knack for getting people from disparate backgrounds together. He was a superb organizer, doing with an ease and grace things that would daunt most people. He could quickly identify what was going on with people or groups or organizations; then he would just as quickly see what could be done to improve things—and he would offer his help.

In all he did, Robin was a re-former. He would seek to re-form things by changing their shape for the better. I suspect he was hardwired for this, because it was so fundamental to him. We can see it in his first job as a toolmaker, in which he would create something useful from something of a different form.

And we can see it in every other job and area of interest he had, including: social work and his committed interest in youth; in scouting and the contributions he made to the lives of many thousands of children and young people; in transactional analysis and his contribution to people’s freedom, aliveness, happiness, and effectiveness; in his work as a psychotherapist, counselor, mentor, teacher, and management consultant; and his interest in and involvement with the Army Reserve.

Robin was a leader, too, always ready to step forward to take responsibility, something he did in many different organizations. It is worth noting that most of these activities were voluntary—a real measure of the man. He was: a captain in the Army Reserve, the Chief Commissioner of Scouting in South Australia, the president of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Association of Social Workers, an ITAA Board of Trustees member, a long-time chairman of the ITAA Ethics Committee, and ITAA President from 1992 to 1993.

He appropriately received a great deal of formal recognition both for who he was as a person and for his many contributions. Perhaps the most important of these, and the one he would both have cherished and been very embarrassed about, would be the presence here today of so many, here to honor him with love and gratitude in our hearts for a life well lived and for the direct influence he has had on us all. More formally, he was also awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study overseas correctional systems and the Order of Australia for his contribution to youth.

This year, he was granted two additional honors: a life membership in the Australian Association of Social Workers for his service to the association and to the profession of social work and the Muriel James Living Principles Award from the ITAA for being a man who lived by the principles espoused in transactional analysis.

As we sit here today, the question that I think faces each of us is: What now? My answer is this: I am convinced that Robin will continue to make the best of things, just as he did right to the end of his physical life. For those of you who don’t know: He only got the diagnosis of stomach cancer and extensive liver cancer a few short weeks ago. Having explored his options to his satisfaction, he decided on chemotherapy. He got some temporary relief from this, but became very ill soon afterward and was admitted to hospital on Sunday, 3 August. Despite his declining condition, he remained upbeat for the next four days. In fact, it was only when he was told that medicine could do no more for him that he shifted gears. That was at 10 am on Friday the 8th. Having assured himself that Val and the rest of the family would be all right, he moved to peaceful acceptance of his condition and slipped away quietly and easily with his family around him at 2:42 pm that afternoon.

Ever since, I keep chuckling to myself about a recurring fantasy: I see Robin talking to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, not that he believed in anything like that. Before they have been chatting for long, Robin is offering to help reorganize the recruitment system into heaven. He has already noticed the hinges on the gates could do with a touch of oil and keeps talking to St. Peter over his shoulder as he makes a start. Then, quite predictably, after starting, he decides to pull the whole structure apart in order to restore and to re-form it.

This Pearly Gates fantasy aside, there is a lovely Hopi Indian poem by Mary Frye that may be closer to what is now happening for Robin, words that may help each of us to deal with our sense of loss.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on snow;
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet white doves in circled flight;
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there;
I did not die.

I am now near the end of what I am going to say, and I have three more things to offer. First, we have a part to play in what comes next for Robin, because we are still linked with him in consciousness to some extent. We can support him now, as he is poised on the threshold of what lies beyond this world that many experience as bound by flesh and blood, feeling and thinking, space and time. We can support him by releasing him from our hearts and minds—saying good-bye. This will help him to move on into what is there for him, where he now is, rather than keeping him caught here with us, because of his love and concern for us. It will help also us to move on into the rest of our lives when we are ready.

Second, let us now encourage him on his way by internally affirming:
Robin, go with our love and thanks.
Leave us now with the rich legacy our memories of you provide.
Move on into all that is beyond this world, all that is there for you now.
Open yourself to the complete acceptance there for you.
Allow yourself to be filled full by the infinite love already enfolding you.
Dissolve into the ineffable joy and bliss now greeting you.
And become the dazzling light that shows your true stature as a living being.

The last thing is this: After the family had left the hospital last Friday, Elizabeth and I meditated with Robin and his body for a while. It was a peaceful and serene time. Then, as we walked outside, we looked up, our attention attracted by a brilliantly coloured complete rainbow that was overarching the hospital. Gasping at its beauty, we thought of one of the meanings of rainbows in Tibetan Buddhism: They are Eternity’s expression of momentary delight at the [physical] demise of a great teacher and of his ongoing presence permeating space and time.

Thank you, Robin, for blessing us with your presence for all these years. We miss you and will always remember you.

Ken Mellor, with his wife Elizabeth, heads up Biame Network, an international, nonprofit educational organization. He can be reached at biamenet@eck.net.au .