Paul Tournier, born May 12, 1898, in Geneva, Switzerland, was the son of Alisabeth (Ormond) and Louis Tournier, who was a clergyman and poet. His seventy-year-old father died shortly after Paul's birth and the death of his mother orphaned him by the time he was six. He was educated at the University of Geneva, where he received an M.D. degree in 1923. On October 4, 1924, he married Nelly Bouvier and became the father in subsequent years of two children, Jena-Louis and Gabriel. His private practice was interrupted by military service for the Swiss Army between 1939 and 1945.

Tournier became deeply interested in Calvinism and the Reformed faith in his post-university years, along with his extensive involvement in civic and medical groups. As a result of his interest in religion, he began to delve more deeply into the relationship between medicine, counseling, and spiritual values. For a period of time, he seriously considered giving up medicine for counseling but decided instead to combine the two, breaking away from the pattern established for psychiatry by Freud.

He became a prolific writer of books dealing with these subjects. Among the best-known are The Healing of Persons, translated from the 1945 French edition in 1965, and English translations of The Meaning of Persons, 1957, A Doctor's Casebook in the Light of the Bible, 1960, Guilt and Grace, 1962, and The Whole Person in the Broken World, 1965. His books were translated into thirteen languages including Chinese and Greek.