Introduction

I have been working as a therapist for fifteen years, both in the voluntary

and the public sector, first as a counsellor and then as a psychotherapist. I

now practise privately, and also teach and supervise students on a

university counselling course. When I started my own training, the ideas

that guided my work were those of Carl Rogers – the person-centred

approach. Then I became interested in psychoanalysis, which led me to the

ideas of Freud and other psychoanalytic thinkers, and gradually to the

desire to experience analysis myself. Many years later I can begin to see

how all these influences inform my work.