Robert Young obituary

My friend Robert Young, who has died aged 83, was a psychotherapist, writer and academic, the author of influential books on Darwin, psychoanalysis and the history of ideas. A brave man of the left, he founded several journals of radical inquiry into science and psychoanalysis, and became a book publisher.

Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Bob was the son of Harold Young, who worked for a cotton filtering machinery company, and his wife, Suzanne (nee Jamison). At Highland Park high school and in the surrounding community, he rubbed shoulders with oil barons' offspring, whose social attitudes repelled him.