Email Practitioner

Tel: 07973 747825

Services

Psychodynamic Counselling

£40 -£45 per hour

£35 concession

£35 -£45

Transpersonal Psychology was my first influence during a 4 year Bachelor of Chinese Medicine degree. In 1991 I studied for a B.Phil where my research focused on the 'lay health beliefs of a deprived community receiving free weekly acupuncture'. I was very interested in how people made new meaning for themselves out of a body/mind intervention.

I felt there was a enormous need for therapy center in Edinburgh with some 'soul' so I founded The Whole Works in the same year (1991) and was then involved with ‘Process Oriented Psychotherapy UK’ followed by training in Gestalt with The Gestalt Trust in 1995.

A Psycho-Hypnotherapy diploma was completed in 1997 and since 1999 studied at The Scottish Institute of Human Relations in Edinburgh and accepted there for Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy training. I completed a Masters in Psychoanalytical Studies in 2005 at Sheffield University.

Inevitably, my style of work can be called ‘eclectic’, though always Psychodynamically reflective, always focussed on the maladaptive defences that stands in the way of needed change. I also make use some Gestalt and Reichian principles in this aim. My approach comes closest to the psychotherapeutic style 'Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy'.

Granted some quality time and imaginative attention the client can begin to 'know' the solutions to their current problems although this 'knowledge’ may be too difficult to think about alone. My purpose I see as a focaliser, catalyst, companion; and occasionally challenger.

But psychotherapy is also very natural, intuitive; calming and clarifying, like a particularly good and honest conversation and it has been for a long time: In the Native American traditions if a brother or sister of the tribe was affected in their 'spirit' in some way, the Elder of the tribe would sit down with them and listen for some considerable time with complete attention until something became clear that had been previously lost to view. The Elder would refrain from any judgement, trusting that some clarifying image would emerge, often from within a dream or from some signifying event in the environment- a bird or animals appearance, a rock fall, a sudden weather change.

I don’t think things have changed so much over that time: In the therapeutic relationship, it seems to me, this journey through what is difficult to bear about being ourselves is still enabled by two people’s willingness to sit down together, pay close attention to what is being said and with a willingness to allow their imaginations be open to what emerges from the unconscious.

Something essential is usually arrived at in therapeutic space that may not otherwise have been found alone.

I have made a particular study of the experience described as feeling ‘too much’ for ourselves, or conversely, its opposite- those empty, depressed, shamed or fragile states of self we also encounter; states where the boundaries of our self seem to have dissolved altogether, culminating in panic, heightened anxiety, depression or even despair.

Because words are occasionally insufficient- simply failing to capture what we Know within, I try to incorporate other ways of expressing our truth –ie by way of dreams, through poetry or through image representations of whatever kind, as a means to engage these ‘lost’ or the not yet realised knowledge of ourselves.