About

My practice is integrative: it includes humanistic and existential approaches but uses psychodynamic and -analytic ideas as its main models – thereby thinking flexibly and critically. Whatever the approach, I think what matters most is the humanity and the heart that is in it. I am currently pursuing my own psychoanalysis for my personal and professional development. I also practice ZEN meditation.

I have substantial experience in statutory and non-statutory mental health service management and an interest in how psychotherapeutic approaches apply to ethical leadership and organisational culture. Before changing to psychology, I studied business and economics, and worked in organic food shops and on biodynamic farms. I care deeply about environmental protection and the development of ethical business chains and -products. I believed then that a more humane and responsible world is possible, and I still believe this now.  I am a committee member of Reading Therapies Group (non-profit CPD for therapists), a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance and a member of the Integral UK discussion group.

I have founded Therapists.Cafe for three reasons. 1) For our profession: I love our profession and the many deeply empathic but also critically thinking colleagues. I am interested in the synergies that happen in groups where we become more than the sum of our parts. These factors can work integratively, allowing the group (and individual members) to grow into more insight and complexity, or destructively, causing stagnation or even dis-integration (e.g. regression, even a form of mass-psychosis like in WWII). I want to create a platform that facilitates positively integrative synergistic/growth-factors to enrich our field. 2) Politically: Like many of us, I am quite horrified by what is happening in the world. The general fragmentation, conflict, selfishness, heartlessness and inconsideration that is frequently allowed to happen on a large scale disturbs me. Being German, I have an apprehension towards being a passive bystander and have a need to contribute actively and positively somehow. Upon long reflection, I have decided that, professionally, an attempt at this contribution will be in creating a platform where we can consciously practice dialogical (intersubjective) and dialectical exchange. This is at the heart of our training: the art of conflict and exchange of ideas without annihilating another or falling apart. I think our profession has a huge contribution to make here. I am interested in theories of ego-development (e.g. Robert Kegan, Susanne Cook-Greuter) and I think our profession can contribute societally and politically in speaking clearly about what is a healthy, mature adult ego that contributes positively to society, and how we can facilitate its growth. 3) Self-interest: Therefore, on a more selfish note, I am creating a platform that will hopefully facilitate the above, and attract the types of colleagues who are interested in the same thing – and, therefore, whom I would like to meet and collaborate with.

I work experientially at the intersection of Psyche (Mind), Soma (Body), and Soul (Spirit), weaving together psychological depth, embodied practices, breath, and sacred rituals to create pathways of soul-deep healing, awakening, and wholeness. Rooted in Ubuntu philosophy, trauma-informed science, and ancestral wisdom, my work alchemizes psychological depth, movement, somatic and ancestral rituals into transformational journeys of self-discovery. My personal experience of marriage breakdown and single motherhood became a crucible of awakening, igniting a fascination with the hidden landscapes of the human psyche and the ways unconscious conflicts shape our relational lives. This led me to embark on a twelve-year heuristic inquiry alongside diverse groups of mothers navigating relationship breakdown and divorce, a journey that became both personal and collective transformation. Through this research, I have illuminated the unconscious intrapsychic processes that shape women’s experiences of love, loss, and self-reclamation. Central to these findings is the way women’s experience of sex and sexuality often emerges as a terrain of trauma re-enactment, an unconscious stage where buried wounds, internalized patriarchal narratives, and silenced desires are replayed in intimate spaces. My work reveals the universal struggles women face within invisible patriarchal contexts, where personal and systemic trauma, rooted in internalized ideals, interplay to silence authentic self-expression. Yet, within this darkness, grief rises as a catalyst for healing and a spiritual alchemy that transforms rupture into rebirth. My therapeutic and research practice extends to both women, men and families in recognition of our interconnectedness as part of a shared human consciousness where when one part of the whole suffers, the other is inevitably impacted. Neither gender is free from the entrapment of inherited systemic patriarchal wounding that shapes and binds us all in visible and invisible ways. I invite individuals to reclaim their inner sovereignty through embodied, experiential pathways of post-traumatic growth, awakening a more soulful, liberated, and authentic way of being both individually and collectively.

iD (formerly IoPT) is a self-development method developed by Professor Franz Ruppert, helping people to find who they truly are by resolving early bonding trauma.

For over 50 years I have pursued two careers: 1) as an award-winning director of over 60 films and TV shows, including Losing Isaiah, Waterland, Homegrown, Twin Peaks, Rectify, Billions and Bosch; 2) as a “professional patient,” trying to gain clarity about my own personal issues through some form of therapy, analysis or 12 Step Program, including Cognitive Behavioral, Adlerian, Attachment, Gestalt, Integrative, Jungian, Marriage and Family, Freudian and Kleinian Psychoanalysis, MPD (DID), Alanon, ACoA, SLAA and DA. All these approaches have helped me resolve particular problems and have contributed to my development.

When I encountered the iD method, I felt I had found a ‘home’ for my therapeutic journey, and I have since trained to facilitate it myself. I hold a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and see myself as a fellow traveller with whomever shares the iD process with me. I have felt incredibly privileged to be able to access different kinds of therapeutic support and I am committed to making therapy more available to people, no matter their financial circumstances.

I am contributing to Therapists.Cafe to support a community project for therapists to support each other and exchange ideas from different perspectives. I am supporting the therapists’ writing group to help therapists develop their creative potential.

I am also currently working on a documentary on the phenomenon of ‘resonance’ between people, what attracts us to each other and how we can interact to develop towards forms of collective ‘healthy self’.

These groups are for therapists only. Therapeutic qualification and registration with a UK accrediting body (UKCP, BACP, HCPC, BABCP, analytic institutes etc) will need to be verified upon booking.

family support, mindfulness and compassion, and mental health and social media.

My early research focused on the development of web-based support for families living with mental and/or somatic illness and the monitoring of physical, mental and oral health in persons with psychosis living within subsidized housing. Several projects were carried out within the Centre of Evidence-Based Psychosocial Intervention’s (CEPI) activities, including projects on stigma, suicide prevention, and a mental health first aid program. I also contributed to research on social media and the COVID-19 pandemic from different perspectives.

Recent research focuses on psychotrauma and therapeutic interventions, and the understanding of trauma from different disciplinary perspectives. As a part of this, I pursued an education in Identity oriented psychotrauma therapy (IoPT) developed by Professor Ruppert. In recent years, I completed a degree in expressive arts for therapeutic and developmental purposes. I also carried out an autoethnographic study on the use of creative art diaries as a tool to develop generic therapeutic competence. I am thus interested in intersection areas where disciplinary perspectives meet and the idea of exploring the complementarity of bottom-up and top-down interventions.

I am keen to support Therapists.cafe as a community project for therapists as I value multi-disciplinary and multi-perspectival approaches in the therapeutic profession – I want to support the research element of the project, evaluating how it could contribute positively to the profession.

Practically, I have spent nearly 40 years in community development, with residents of housing estates, around family- and disability support, and with institutional racism. In my personal life, I have continuously worked on becoming more conscious through self-reflection, dialogue and contemplative practice – I’ve been practicing a socially engaged form of Buddhism for over 40 years. I am interested in integral theories of consciousness development, for example, by Ken Wilber.

Since 2012 I have been meticulously researching what has been, and is, happening across Britain on a socio-political level through many different theoretical lenses. This research resulted in the publication of ‘The Britian Potential’ (2019) which has a focus on the enormous creativity happening in the UK`s civil society. It examines the unique ways of how people respond to the demands on them in their work lives, in their families, and in so many dimensions of life.

I am currently working on a forthcoming book with the content of x.

I am supporting Therapists Cafe to find their way to develop a sound, thriving platform for social networking for therapist driven by ethicality, integrity and creativity. I am happy to contribute some tried and tested insights befitting community work in our times and its manifold challenges, from a professional as well as personal perspective.

I have also run various of my own successful sales businesses for the past 15 years.

I am currently developing my model of business consulting in order to help use my own experience to help other entrepreneurs. I provide consultancy to Therapists Cafe on business strategy and implementation.

We are currently looking for other mentors in the field of ethical business development, particularly in the world of therapy or community development. If you feel that you would like to contribute to this project, please be in touch.