"Functional Intelligence™ is based on the theories within Sociology. It quantifies the effect the environment has on any individual, allowing that individual to discover the criteria necessary to live a fulfilled lifestyle".
Dr. Neil Whitehouse Ph.D Interdisciplinary Studies

 Personal Testimony
I was born in Benoni South Africa and I descendant from a very honest family. I hated having to go to school, and was always experimenting with mechanical things to try and work out how they function from a very young age.

At twelve years old my Dad had a very old "Earthmaster" tractor that no one seemed to be able to get to run effectively. I asked him, “Dad if I can fix the tractor can I have it?” He replied laughing, “Sure son if you can do that the tractor is yours.”

Two weeks after the question Dad came home from work and his eyes nearly popped out of his head, when he noticed me driving the tractor around the plot that we were living on. Dad was amazed and asked, "Who helped you son, to fix this tractor?" "No one Dad" I replied "worked it out!" was my reply. My Dad just shook his head and whispered under his breath “unbelievable”.

I went through my schooling with great difficulty, constantly causing interruptions with pranks and was a teachers worst nightmare. I built clocks and door bells into my school case and would ring the bell or a cuckoo clock during lesson, disrupting the class. I was a very small lightly built boy, up until the age of sixteen and was bullied constantly.

My Mom and I constantly bumped heads as I was not exactly the son she wanted; I became very rebellious and angry at the world, praying daily that I would become big and strong so I could beat up the bullies. Every day the bigger boys used to knock me off my bicycle, laugh and mock me on my way back from school.

My Dad taught me to protect myself as he was a boxer himself and said I must learn to fight my own battles. We were a horsey family and spent our weekends riding and jumping horses. My Dad had bought a hippo hide whip, which I never ever saw him use at anytime. One day I got so desperate with being bullied by older and bigger boys I took this whip with me to school and after school I rode my bicycle as hard as I could to a storm drain just before where the bullies used to beat me daily. In my heart my knees were shaking and I was afraid. I climbed in the drain and not long thereafter peeping from the drain I saw the usual three bullies riding their bikes towards me, oblivious that I was hiding in the drain. As they got just past me I jumped out the drain, ran up behind them and hit all three one at a time with all my power across their backs with the whip. They did not have time to think about what was happening and there were screams of agony around me.

The whip had split their flesh on their backs open and they were screaming in agony. I started to shout and shake the whip in front of them and told them to get off their bicycles as I was going to beat them as they had beaten me. I was terrified that they would take the whip away from me and beat me, but to my surprise they got such a fright looking at the anger in my face that they started to pedal as hard as they could to get away from my wroth. That was the last time they ever gave me any trouble. In fact they avoided me like a plaque.

At the age of sixteen, I weighed about 49kgs and thought I wanted to be a jockey. I was regularly suffering from sore throats, and the like. I had my tonsils removed and by the time I was eighteen, I was physically fit and grew to 1.90 meters tall and weighed in at 125kgs of muscle. Sometimes I think that we must be careful what we pray for, because it is likely to happen.

I enjoyed getting into brawls and would stop at nothing when I saw a person bullying a smaller person. I was expelled from school in my ninth grade, the reason being for some years there was teacher who constantly made my life miserable, so I decided to take the law into my own hands and gave the teacher a hiding I am sure he has never forgotten.

I grew up so confused that I really did not know what my purpose in life was, my Dad advised me to become a qualified engineering pattern-maker. He baited me by explaining that I could join him in his Iron & Steel Foundry. The apprenticeship was a five year term and I hated it. I thought if I worked hard I could finish early which I completed in two and a half years. I completed a technical diploma known as Advanced Technical Certificate II which is now a N5 in the modern technical world. I worked with Dad three months and resigned - the Iron and Steel Foundry was not for me.

During my youth I was obsessed with fast cars and used to spend all my spare times modifying and building cars up from scratch to be very fast and slick.

I started to race cars at a very young age without my parents knowledge and was very successful at this until one day I raced a wealthy businessman who thought he had the fastest car in town. A friend loaned me R100.00 so I placed a bet that I would drop this gentleman’s fastest Austin Healey 3000/6 in town, over the standard quarter mile drag race. I had a very hot Triumph TR3 A. I dropped this Austin-Healey so badly that I completed the drag spun the car around and was on my way back before he got to the finishing post.

I later found out that this gentleman was a very good friend of Dads. I was severely reprimanded by Dad and he confiscated my car and bought me a new car. I was angry and resented this fact. As this Triumph TR3 I built from scratch. It was very sentimental to me as it was a form of escaping reality.

I was married at the age of 23 years old and I went dairy farming with Dad in the Natal midlands in South Africa. My wife became lonely and left me for some dude who had a lot more time to spend with her as well as a lot more money. This devastated me causing me to feel serious insecurity and guilt. I had a fall out with my parents and went to live on the South Coast of South Africa.

I trained as a professional life saver and spent eight months sitting in the sun and enjoying the lifestyle of being able to spend my day swimming in the rough seas, seeing it as a challenge. I lived in the lifesavers club house and ate from the left over’s at the beach tea room in Scottburgh. I felt rejection and disappointment, I was angry and always looking for a bully to beat up.

Jumping a number of years ahead, I had many hours as an experienced pilot and enjoyed doing aerobatics and high dangerous precision flying manoeuvres then thought I would like to become an airline pilot professionally. I went to South African Airways head office in Johannesburg where I was tested for health and competency on a flight simulator where I passed with flying colors. After some basic instruction I became a first officer on one of the first Boeing's introduced to South Africa.

Cutting a very long story short, after eight months I became impatient and frustrated flying as a first officer. Finding, flying passengers from city to city extremely boring, as repetitive work was a no-brainer for me and I really missed the stalls and spins that one does as a fighter or aerobatic pilot, and decided I wanted to put the Boeing through it paces. This led to my dismissal from the airways.

I continued with my life as an entrepreneur starting own businesses building them up and then getting bored and selling them. I have spent most of my life starting businesses and became a very wealthy business man in my own right. I have owned five aircraft starting with a Cessna 172 and ending with a Piper Seneca 3. I was at one stage the sole supplier of live cattle to the Mauritius Meat Authority, which ended up in bankruptcy due to sanctions being placed on South Africa political apartheid system.

I once again came back as a entrepreneur owning automotive dealerships, trucking businesses, Panel Beating, Estate Agencies, Spec building contractor, and many more.

At the age of 53 years old I went bankrupt for the second time in my life and lost everything I owned, I remember being in a total state of despair knowing that all I had worked for in my life was in vain, I felt an absolute failure and the thought that my wife and two children would have to walk through the humiliation of being homeless was devastating to me.

I entered into such a state of depression and helplessness that I could not cope any longer. I was sitting in a room contemplating my demise when my daughter burst into the room screaming “Dad, what are you doing, how can you think of leaving us?” I burst into tears saying "My darling I have failed you all and I can’t anymore." After a brief time of weeping and wailing with my family, I started to reflect back on my life, rationalizing the successes of the past to the failure of that present moment.

I found it difficult to rationalize why I was such a positive, self assured, motivated character in the past but at that moment feeling absolutely helpless and worthless.

At that very moment, in a twinkling of an eye, I changed my attitude and became challenged to investigate and research what had caused my present attitude or frame of thinking. I stood up and said to my family, I am going to research these changes in my inner feelings or belief systems that had changed my attitude towards myself so dramatically. it became a passion so I could help people who have the same feelings and experiences as I had cope.

I was going to study and research what had caused this dramatic change in my attitude.

By this time my wife had a good stable job and although having to live in a caravan, I started to research what had caused me to get to a state of suicide. I was going to research how the human body functions holistically. After all this was I still the same person?

I started off by going to the experts and visited approx 14 Psychologists and approximately eight well recommended psychiatrists. Amazingly telling the same story to each of the professionals I found that each gave me a different explanation and recommendation.

All used the phrase “normal“ numerous times during my interview. The Psychiatrists were all ready to offer me different anti-depressants tablets to solve my problems. I was either suffering from a "post dramatic stress disorder" or a "Clinical post depression syndrome", and/or various other disorders.

I was neither depressed or stressed at the time purely trying to research the cause in my attitude from success to failure.

It is amazing fact, that when one sits in a position of absolute desperation, we ask the following questions, "is there a God above and if so who is he and why do I not know him?"

I heard about evolution and that was really a no-brainer for me because this whole person I know as Neil could not have possible evolved from nothing. The complexity of the human structure to come together and function in absolute harmony with all its complex parts is mind boggling. This can only be possible through design and not by chance.

I knew even a simple Rat trap with only five components could not evolve as it is by design, let alone all the hundreds of different veins, tissues, cornea, crystalline lens, iris, etc of the eye that allow us to see and then rationalize from what we see and logically explaining what we have seen is absolutely mind boggling and can only be by super design, so I started to study theology at the same time.

My research for some 13 years to date gave me the following results:

We are all unique and therefore it is impossible to define any type of norm, because where is no starting point or ending point to a unique human being. To date the scholars of the psychological world cannot answer that question. Because of our uniqueness it is impossible to quantify human behavior scientifically without considering the impact of environmental factors.

We can only define an environment and thereby quantify the affect that the environment has on the unique individual.

It is the environment and the environment alone which has any direct impact on a humans functionality. This researched and defined subject has been researched for many years but the name was coined by myself and is known as  “Functional Intelligence™”.