About me
A notable psychoanalyst once said that psychotherapy is a process of introducing us to the one person we will spend our whole life with: namely our self. This suggests that we might not know ourselves as well as we think and that we may require some help in this process. This brings us to another important factor of psychotherapy: asking for help. We spend our lives being helped in different ways but how often do we consider our relationship to help, our need to be helped or our capacity to tolerate and bear being helped? We all carry stories about what we can and can’t be helped with in our lives. These stories can be traced back to childhood. Until we can see the influence of the past it can be difficult to know what changes we need to make in the present. Psychotherapy is concerned with getting to the root of our difficulties and offers a way of exploring our underlying problems which aren’t so readily accessible to our usual ways of thinking.
Training, qualifications & experience
I trained as a Psychodynamic Psychotherapist at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust. I am a Registered Member of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) and a Registered and Accredited Member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP). I have worked in general practice and outpatient services and currently work at Cambridge University and the Counselling Foundation in Hertfordshire. I also work privately in St Albans.
When we meet, you can tell me about yourself and what it is that has brought you here. You may have some questions that are on your mind about how I work. I usually suggest that we arrange three initial consultations to help us both decide upon whether working together will be useful. A desire to understand yourself better, and perhaps function better in the world may be sufficient motivation to engage in psychotherapy.
Individual appointments last 50 minutes and are held at regular intervals, at least once weekly, and sometimes more often depending on your specific situation.
Member organisations
school Registered / Accredited
Being registered/accredited with a professional body means an individual must have achieved a substantial level of training and experience approved by their member organisation.
The British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) is a professional association, representing the profession of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
The organisation is itself made up of fourteen member organisations and BPC accredits the trainings of its member organisations. An individual who qualifies from one of these trainings is then eligible for entry into the BPC's register.
BPC registrants are governed by a code of ethics, a policy of continuing professional development, a statement on confidentiality and a complaints procedure. The BPC is a Member Society of the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Public Sector (EFPP). Accredited by the Professional Standards Authority.
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred). Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision. Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training. All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Therapies offered
Fees
£70.00 per session
