My life experience has been working with people. Initially this was as a teacher, but in the second half of life I undertook training in psychotherapy. I did this because I was seeking to be able to continue working usefully with people without having to experience the hurly-burly of life in a classroom. I trained for psychotherapy at AUT. I prefer to work in a psychodynamic modality, which basically means that I believe past experience influences present behaviour and that it does this in several ways. These may include defense mechanisms such as repression, denial, displacement of feelings and projection. There are others. I accept we have unconscious processes, which may be revealed by defenses and by dreams.

I see psychotherapy as a two-person interaction with one person being the therapist and the other person being the client (or even a couple as client). Indeed relationship difficulties form the most common presenting problem brought to counsellors and psychotherapists. There are many good reasons for this but basically we are social beings and our ability to form strong relational social bonds is often damaged or under-developed during our upbringing. So relationship with parents and family of origin is usually worth exploring.

The second most common presenting problem is depression; this often involves not being able to relate well to others, possibly because of flawed beliefs taken on about ourselves as we grow up. My job is to make sense of what clients tell me, and to do this accepting people as they are without criticism or judgement. Then we can explore ways to produce the changes the client may want. I believe it is the quality of the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist which is the key healing factor in therapy and that this is a two-way process.