The Work

I orginally trained in Somatic Psychotherapy, which is an integrative (integrating psychodynamic and somatic theory and praxis) experiential therapy designed to address a person’s ‘character’. This term really refers to the whole constellation of adaptive and maladaptive traits, inherited and acquired, that create a particular identity, you!

However, over the last 15 years, I made a conversion-in-practice to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It wasn’t such a big jump, but I still gained some important growth as a therapist in the process.  The work I do is still informed by my training as a Somatic Psychotherapist and is situated in the character-analytic tradition of psychoanalysis.

Important insight has been added to the field in recent decades through contemporary studies in  Attachment Theory and Child Development studies, and, to an extent, Neurobiology. It has been rewarding and clinically helpful to thoughtfully incorporate these developments.  I also draw on philosophical inquiry, in particular Intersubjectivity and Phenomenology.

In 2010 I trained in Eye Movement, Desensitization and Re-processing therapy (EMDR), specifically to bolster my treatment of trauma and dissociation. This too has had a welcome impact across my practice, and together with many patients, we have achieved some really great outcomes. Since training, I have spent those years working on developing my approach, integrating EMDR with psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and developing my work as an adjunctive therapist for other Psychodynamic or Psychoanalytic colleagues who choose to use a co-therapist approach for particular treatments.