In this video, we go back to 1963 and feature the song, “Wipeout,” by The Ventures. The Ventures not only give us a song that has stood the test of time, but a structure for creating a successful life.

In this video, we go back to 1982 and feature the song, “Giant,” by The The. The song contains the greatest psychological cop out in Rock history.

In this video, we go back to 1982 and feature the song, “Uncertain Smile,” by The The. The band describes the opportunities and disturbances that arise when we undergo psychological change.

In this video, we go back to 1960s and feature the song, “Bella Linda,” by The Grass Roots. The band describes a difficult issue that effects all relationships.

The latest video in my HEAD BANGERS series, where I explore the secret meanings of classic rock songs. In this video, we go back to 1982 and feature the song, “Dance This Mess Around,” by the B-52’s. The band walks… Read more: PSYCHOTHERAPIST REVEALS SECRETS: Classic Rock | Dance This Mess Around, B-52’s

The latest video in my HEAD BANGERS series, where I explore the secret meanings of classic rock songs. In this video, we go back to 1970 and feature the song, “Almost Cut My Hair,” by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.… Read more: PSYCHOTHERAPIST REVEALS SECRETS: Classic Rock | Almost Cut My Hair‘ by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Really pleased to have my novel featured in reviewed in J-Wire

”A Different Mind” – a paper focusses on my four years living and working on the Warmun Community.

Really pleased to have my novel, The Interpretation Of Cakes, reviewed by the ANZlitlovers blog.

In discussion with Deborah Boerne about my new novel, “The Interpretation of Cakes.”

Really pleased to have my novel featured in Sydney Morning Herald recommended books.

An exploration of the relationship between psychoanalysis and Australian Indigenous Culture.

Welcome to my first video blog where I analyse Waiting for the Sun by The Doors.

A therapy is ultimately about being able to bear overwhelming feelings, without knowing what to do and how it will end.

When we create from who we really are, we express something authentic that touches people.

I will be presenting this paper as part of the Two Way Learning Webinar Series offered by Australian Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Psychotherapy usually begins with a difficult working through past traumas. In time, the patient begins to feel psychologically freer and starts to experiment. 

Psychotherapy cannot change the world.  It can only help us to understand how our responses are affected by our history.  

The environment the therapist creates will be an expression of how the therapist views the world and mental health.

Some people seek therapy because success is not enough. They want more from life.

The creation of a good psychotherapeutic foundation begins with the assessment of the patient’s ability to engage in a therapy. 

Look beyond the immediacy of the patient’s presentation, to pick up the subtle clues and follow where they might lead.

A paper for the International Psychoanalytic Association’s Asia-Pacific Conference 2020.

Many patient’s come to psychotherapy believing that a feeling is a feeling which everybody experiences and expresses in the same way.

One way to think about a psychotherapy is as an exploration of how a person reacts to disturbing events in their lives.

Patients who did not feel loved by their parents, and rarely felt safe as children, often tried therapies with a cognitive or behavioural focus.

People came to therapy because, despite having a fairly good start to life, something was missing.

The character of the practitioner is fundamental to how a therapy proceeds.

Taking a look at the moments that personality is formed. They effect how we believe the world will respond to us.

As human beings, we tend to normalise dramatic psychological disturbances.

Every baby lives with sudden changes in their mother’s disposition. Each has to develop ways to deal with their mother’s sudden changes from soft to hard, present to absent.

Bertha Pappenheim was the child of two loving parents. However, it seems her father was too enchanted by the imaginative aspect of her personality.

Like Dorothy suddenly finding herself in Munchkinland in The Wizard of Oz, Bertha doesn’t seem daunted by the strange land of psychotherapy.

Amalia Nathansohn was born in Brody, then part of Galicia, now a town of 24,000 people in Ukraine, in 1835.

Patients are shocked when these aspects of the self are revealed in the therapy.

Peter Gay notes that although Freud undertook systematic self-analysis of his own psyche, he never explored his attachment with his mother.

Like Bertha, psychotherapy patients are often surprised to discover how much a psychotherapy offers, and respond to this possibility.

When patients realise the internal compromises they made in order to emotionally survive painful events or circumstances, they often get angry with themselves.

Sitting with a psychotherapy patient, a therapist can suddenly feel pain, empathy, fear, rage, envy and even boredom. 

In my experience, most therapies begin with a nasty cough. That is not to say that the issues that lead people to seek help are minor.

In my time as a psychotherapist, no one has ever asked for a heart that’s abloom.

Did the anger register in their bodies, or was it just in their heads? Did they want to lash out, or pull back into a defensive shell?

Many people, who come to therapy, spend a great deal of time reflecting on themselves and why they are the way they are.

As they were dancing, the Northcote School for Crippled children were suddenly more than they thought they could be.

A group of disabled children, many who have barely moved for years, spontaneously dancing, could be seen as a minor miracle.

Many people come to psychotherapy believing they know what they want.

As medical men, including Sigmund Freud, beat a path to Paris to watch Charcot’s hypnotised patients act out their hysterical symptoms to a raptured audience.