My training and practice
My experience covers 25 years study of psychoanalysis, both in Australia, where I completed a four year training with the Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis (ACP) and in the UK where I completed baby and toddler observations at the Anna Freud Centre and obtained a Masters degree in Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology at the University of London. I have a PhD in Psychological Medicine from Monash University and am a registered psychoanalyst with the ACP.
My training means that I weigh the unconscious forces at work in the pathology of an individual. My work is ethical in that it seeks the independent desire of the patient, not an identification with the analyst. It takes into account the suffering caused by the symptom, but in an indirect way, by deciphering the signifiers involved in an individual’s formation.
My clinical work has ranged from agency consulting at treating centres such as Pomegranate House in Ballarat, to private work with patients seeking a personal analysis for conditions ranging from depression and anxiety to bi-polar disorder. My contribution to mental health has been recognized in the form of awards from bodies including the Public Health Association of Australia, The Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Service and The Mental Health Fellowship of Victoria, of which I am a life member.
As well as extensive theoretical and clinical training, I have written widely on psychoanalysis, authoring A History of Psychoanalysis in Australia: From Freud to Lacan and co-authoring Cries Unheard, a book on mental illness. My writing includes essays in The Griffith Review, Arena, Meanjin and Psychotherapy Australia and contributions to The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The London Financial Times.
