Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy’s aims: inner change through self-understanding; relief from repeated painful experiences stemming from within; finding one’s voice and developing self-possession.
The patient’s task: taking courage to tell truthfully of their troubles and preoccupations, including their concerns about the therapeutic process itself.
The psychotherapist’s job: helping the patient attend to, face, and own, rather than deflect from, their anxieties – so they can move beyond, rather than remain curtailed by, them. Sharing what they notice about patterns the patient is unwittingly repeating – so the patient can make conscious life choices rather than remaining driven by unconscious habits.
My own practice is ‘psychodynamic’. This means that I’ll sometimes focus on the ways in which my patient unconsciously tends to get in their own way in their relationships with themself, with me, and with the other people in their life. I also draw on existential and cognitive-behavioural approaches. However every psychotherapy relationship is different; its key features will be developed together by patient and therapist as they make ongoing attempts at truthfulness, apt trust, accountability, understanding, care-taking, courage, dignity, acceptance, challenge, honesty and forgiveness.
I currently see psychotherapy patients on Tuesday morning, Wednesday afternoon and early evening, and all day Thursday and Friday.
Before embarking on psychotherapy, it’s important to first have an assessment session. In this the patient can share something of the difficulties that lead them to seek therapy, and perhaps something too of their life circumstance and background. The primary function of this session is for both therapist and prospective patient to consider whether working together could be useful to the latter. A 15 minute phone conversation (no charge) before any initial assessment is also possible.
Assessment and therapy sessions are £100 for a 50 minute session (payable monthly in arrears; fees will next be revised in May 2027). There is no concessionary rate. Further details about billing, missed sessions, etc., on application.
Resources
For more information on the nature of psychotherapy, how to choose a good therapist, making good use of your therapy sessions, and psychotherapy’s evidence base:
Jonathan Shedler:
How to choose a psychotherapist: A guide to recognizing competence
Getting started in psychotherapy: A guide for patients (and their therapists)
That was then, this is now: An introduction to contemporary psychodynamic psychotherapy
The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy
Deborah Luepnitz:
Schopenhauer’s Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy
UKCP:
BPS: