About Me.
I think of myself as a musician of people’s souls. For me there is nothing finer and more fascinating in life than to be in service to my clients as I watch them discover and transform their inner being, reveal their inner beauty, and manifest their authentic selves out in the world.
My own transformation from what I was in my thirties to what I have become is the central story of my life. Now that I am in my seventies, I find the trials, tribulations, achievements and the joys of my life have synthesised into a particular transpersonal world view which is the basis of what I am, how I live and how I work.
Life throws at us what life throws at us.
That cannot be avoided or changed.
It’s what you do with the experience that matters.
The weekly process of transpersonal therapy, challanging, enlightening, painful, and sometimes fun, can lead a person to fundamental change, even transformation. You know you have got there when, without realising how it happened, you suddenly find yourself not thinking and doing things you have done as far back as you can remember.
Personally, I continue to be fuelled by the passions that have sustained me throughout my life – an ever deepening love of fine art, classical music, opera, architecture, my NGS garden, travelling to distant places, climbing mountains, and making life, and the world, more beautiful for myself and others.
For UK & International Zoom sessions:
07730 337 300
contact@philpsychotherapy.com
My Experience
I work internationally as a Integrative Transpersonal Psychotherapist. Of my thirty five years experience, thirty were as a staff member at the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, London. I have been a student supervisor, group facilitator, tutor, academic work assessor, re-accreditation assessor, and lecturer. As a Senior Clinician, I have run many groups for gay men and sundry organisations, as well as having an ongoing private practice of clients in various stages of changing their lives.
My previous careers were in teaching music in comprehensive schools, substance misuse within an NHS context, and marrying and burying people as a celebrant and Interfaith Minister.
I know what is like to have a debilitating years-long illness, and, as a gay man, I have acquired lived experience of cultural prejudice and ‘otherness’. I have a working knowledge of mysticism, the major faith paths and sceptical humanism, as well as a broad knowledge of alternative healing therapies.
UKCP registered
Fully insured
Psychotherapy Diploma
Advanced Diploma
Supervision Diploma
Dreams Certificate
C.C.P.E., London
Trauma Certificate
Fellow of Trinity College of Music, A.R.C.O., M.T.C.
My therapy style
The all-embracing Transpersonal model is the core of my work. Psycho-dynamic and existential perspectives are foundational, while my ‘style’ is person-centred Rogerian. Strongly intuitive, I place my ‘hunches’ at the service of clients. They can then arrive at their own meaning and significance of the sessions and their lives.
Whilst I specialise in dealing with mid-life crisis (i.e. age thirty-three onwards), I have considerable experience working with lives in crisis, trauma, abuse, delayed shock, sexuality and gender issues, disintegrating relationships, divorce, ageing, death, dying and feeling vaugely unfilled despite having everything.
I draw upon a clients’ body wisdom, dreams, inner child and family parts, and use gestalt, imagework, artwork and creative visualisations to make their unconscious known. Stuckness gives way to a freer flowing of emotion, sensation, and thought – and therefore choice. Add tapping into that person’s higher self, their essence, even soul, and we have arrived at the Transpersonal – that which is beyond the known in our brains and egos, but is irrefutably felt inside the still, silent spaces within our hearts.
Executive Mentorship
It is an immutable Law of Life that a person’s greatest strength is simultaneously their greatest weakness.
A second immutable law is that there is hubris.
Executive personnel are hired for their strengths. These permeate pyramidically to the foundations of their business organisation. But what of the leaders’ weaknesses which similarly permeate downwards but are hidden in their unconscious?
The transpersonal mentorship I practice is only tangentially concerned with the practicalities of corporate behaviour. Instead, its’ primary focus is that of intuitive insight into the mystery of why things happen, and how forces seemingly beyond anybody’s control can actually be the unconscious chaotic acting out of the leader’s shadow. Bringing these hidden traits into conscious awareness – before they envelope the entire system and workforce – is the first step to purifying and harmonising the corporate body of the business. The organisation then has a greater propensity to achieve a deeper, more balanced ethos and culture.
As it is at the top, so it is at the bottom.
Of course it takes a certain amount of courage for someone whose job it is to manage others to admit their own weaknesses, and to question their own business and personal psyche and self. Using integrative enquiries and techniques, executive mentorship works ‘outside the box’, acknowledges intuitive insights, questions unconscious motivations, and challenges accepted ways of working and behaving. The aim is balance – acquiring the mobility to react without excess, shrewdly and confidently in any given situation – in other words, compassionate leadership.
There is a further benefit to executive mentorship; as leaders develop a deeper understand of themselves, they have a better chance of understanding others. This cannot but lead to smoother working relationships.
As it is inside the person of the executive, so it outside in the body of the organisation.
Practicalities
Please email/text and I will contact you to arrange an introductory session. Once we’ve decided to work with each other, I usually suggest an initial series of six weekly sessions, four for coaching, after which we can then decide whether to continue longer term. If you are in real crisis, I’m happy to work, possibly even twice a week, for as long as is appropriate.
Sessions are conducted on zoom.
In person sessions are available in Lancashire, UK., Central London, and the South London/Surrey border.
