Channi Kumar was born in India (Punjab) and came alone, without his family, to England at the age of 13 years: this experience surely contributed to his originality and to the openness of his mind. His medical and psychiatric training, his doctorate in pharmacology as well as his work with midwives on the maternity ward and his interest in psychology – all of these attributes led him to be open to, for example, the physiological and hormonal aspects of medication and also, especially in recent years, to the psychological and relational dimensions of maternal disease. He was also interested in the French psychoanalytical approaches but felt always exterior to this dimension.