I have been a psychotherapist and trainer since 1978. Before that I studied meditation while in India for nine months (1969) and on return trained as a school teacher (1971-73). On qualifying I worked with troubled adolescents in comprehensive schools whose challenge took me to my own therapy. I attended many humanistic groups in the early 1970s and went on to study child psychotherapy (1973-75), psychosynthesis (1975-78) and family therapy (1980-82). Since reading Hillman’s Revisioning Psychology, I consider myself to be a student of archetypal psychology and attempt to put soulmaking into practice. Another major influence is David Abram who manages to write how I only dream (Becoming Animal & The Spell of the Sensuous)
In 1988 I co-founded ReVision (http://www.re-vision.org.uk), an integrative psychotherapy training with soulful perspective from which I retired in 2018. During 2010 I initiated an ecopsychology six-month course with Mary-Jayne Rust. During 2012 I was part of the Welfare group of psychotherapists attempting to support the Occupy movement. Later that year I joined the Climate Psychology Alliance and became chair from 2018 -2020. After forty-five years I have now retired from working with clients and am focusing on bringing psychotherapeutic perspectives and skills to cultural interventions.
Publications
- Psychotherapy at a cultural threshold in Climate Psychology and Change Ed. Steffi Bednarek (2024 forthcoming)
- On Ageing: Coming Home in Jung's Shadow Concept: The Hidden Light and Darkness within Ourselves Ed. Perry & Tower. (2023) Routledge
- Holding and Being Held: Group work and Ecoanxiety in Context: Group Analytic Society International (2023) https://groupanalyticsociety.co.uk/contexts
- Co-author with Wendy Hollway, Paul Hoggett & Sally Weintrobe Climate Psychology: A Matter
of Life and Death (2022)Phoenix
- Contributed the chapter ‘Culture Crisis’ to Depth Psychology and Climate Change: the Green Book: Mathers (ed). Routledge 2020
- Co-editor and contributor to the ReVision anthology Transformation in Troubled Times (2018) Transpersonal Press
- Contributed the chapter ‘Dangerous Margins’ to the anthology Vital Signs (Karnac, 2012).
- Co-author of Emotions and Needs (OUP, 2002).
- Co-edited the Psychotherapist (2016: 63) on Climate Change, Despair and Radical Hope.
- Author of several articles including, Hungry Ghosts: Psychotherapy, control and the winds of homecoming (Self & Society 2014), Ecopsychology’s Wilding (PPI 2013), The Numinous Psyche IJP (Vol. 18, 2012).
Video
- Co-creator of Borderlands and the Wisdom of Uncertainty course, which in 1989 became the subject of a BBC documentary.
- Paradoxical Perspectives on Cultural Psychotherapy: presentation for Climate Change, nearly carbon free conference: University California 2016.