Jock McKeen

Education and Honours

McKeen received his M.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 1970, and did his medical internship at the Royal Columbian Hospital, New Westminster, B.C., Canada, 1970-71. He received a Lic.Ac.(UK), from the College of Chinese Acupuncture, Oxford, England, in 1974. He was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha Honour Medical Society in 1968. In 2012, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by Vancouver Island University for his work with Bennet Wong in establishing the Haven Institute.

Individual career

McKeen was a regular panelist for many years on the weekly television quiz show Take Your Choice. In 1969, he was part of a medical field clinic in Jamaica. In 1969 and 1970, he worked in street clinics and drug crisis centres with the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Research Foundation, London, Ontario. Between 1971-1974, McKeen was on the staff of the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, B.C., working in emergency medicine. In 1973-74, he studied classical Chinese acupuncture with J. R. Worsley at the College of Chinese Acupuncture in Oxford, England. He returned to Vancouver to establish a medical practice using acupuncture and psychological approaches.

McKeen has advocated integration of eastern and western medical approaches, encouraging western medicine to study oriental approaches and acupuncturist to cooperate with western medicine. He engaged in advocacy resulting in legislation permitting nonmedical practitioners to use acupuncture. From 1984-88, he was a member of the Senate of the Academy of Sciences for Traditional Chinese Medicine in Victoria, B.C., which established the Canadian College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. He was appointed in 1988 as a Charter Member of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture. From 1987 on, he has been teaching classical Chinese philosophy and medicine in Asia. He was appointed Professor of Humanistic Psychology at Hua Wei University in Shen Zhen, China in 2007.

Partnership with Bennet Wong

He worked jointly with the Canadian psychiatrist Bennet Wong since 1970 in group psychotherapy and growth groups until Wong's death in 2013. Their long-standing professional partnership is the subject of Ben and Jock: A Biography by Gerry Fewster. They proposed a harmonious blending of eastern and western medical approaches. They conducted onsite trainings in Thailand for the Peace Corps, and taught a 20-day seminar entitled "Harmony: East-West Integration" in Taipei, Taiwan, and Beijing, China. A core thesis of their living philosophy is that people become ill when they hold back from each other, and can become healthier in the revelation of an intimate relationship. They have written and lectured about human sexuality. Couples, a video series that documents their relationship work, has been featured on PBS television.

From 2004 until 2008, they were consultants to Hua Wei Corporation, a Chinese global telecommunications company, advising about management training and corporate development. Their belief was that business can be a vehicle for relationship development, and thus a way to enhance health, wellness and life fulfillment.

The Haven Institute

Wong and McKeen founded the Haven Institute in 1983 and were active in its development until 2004, when they passed their ownership of the Institute into The Haven Foundation, a federally recognized Canadian non-profit charity. Both men are now Emeritus Faculty of The Haven Institute.

Selected McKeen peer-reviewed journal articles

Books

Selected peer-reviewed journal articles