With a practice grounded in over 30 years of experience as a medical doctor, psychotherapist and medical educator (teaching doctors about psychodynamic principals and how to apply them), as well as being a mental health care standards adviser (GPMHSC), I offer a compassionate and personalised approach to mental health care. Specialising in individual psychotherapy, I am dedicated to helping individuals navigate through a wide array of psychological challenges. If your problem is long standing and has been resistant to significant improvement via other treatments or you are on long term medication and you want to decrease your need for it long term, then contact me and I would be glad to offer you assistance. Even though my practice does not involve prescribing I understand that you may be on medication, and I am happy to work with this. In many cases as the therapy progresses there is the potential to reduce or eliminate the need for psychoactive medication. If there are changes to your medication requirements, then any changes will be in consultation with your regular medical practitioner.
I specialise in treating Chronic conditions. (Chronic just means long lasting even though it may have ups and downs).
Treatment is provided for a variety of chronic conditions, including but not limited to
Psychodynamic psychotherapy(also often called Psychoanalytic therapy) has the transformative power to bring about meaningful and lasting change in an individuals mental health and personality. (see below).
All consultations qualify for Government funded Medicare Rebates and the Medicare Safety net, with no Medicare-imposed limit on the number of sessions. While a referral is not necessary, patients are encouraged to bring any letters from their doctors, ensuring a comprehensive approach to care. Follow-up communication with your GP is also offered to maintain a coordinated treatment plan. Each appointment is carefully scheduled for 45 minutes, ensuring that every patient receives the focused attention they deserve. Complete privacy is always assured, and no third-party communication occurs without your full consent. Appointments are spaced so that absolute privacy is assured.
Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy offers a compassionate and empowering approach to healing. It is based on the idea that to solve a problem you do best by understanding the problem deeply enough that the possible solutions become clear. In other words, "knowledge is power". The method involves understanding that our mental operating system (to borrow a computing analogy) is mostly running in our unconscious background and that we are only aware of it when things go wrong. It takes a deep explorative and safe experience to bring it into our conscious foreground but once there it can be brought in to consideration and changed.
How it works in a nutshell
The unconscious mind, which develops throughout our lives, serves as an automatic coping mechanism for daily situations. However, sometimes, as a result of traumatic or unusual circumstances it adopts unhelpful and pathological reactions that, while once protective, no longer serve us well and hold us back or cause psychological distress. (Imagine driving for the first time in a country that drives on the opposite side to the one you learned in.) This form of Psychotherapy, drawing on principles from psychoanalysis, aims to bring these unconscious processes to consciousness where they can be understood and changed. By understanding these hidden aspects of ourselves, we can choose to adopt healthier ways of thinking and relating, then practice and adopt them. Thus, breaking free from the cycles that cause distress, symptoms and setbacks in our lives.
What is the unconscious? How do I know it exists?
We all have an unconscious as a normal part of functioning so that we can effectively navigate daily tasks and situations like driving a car, typing, and operating in interpersonal situations without excessive concentration. We are then free to use our minds for other activities like listening to music, making conversation or thinking about other things. Once we have learned a consistent way of performing in certain tasks or situations then the process is internalised and ceases to be at the front of our consciousness and so can become subconscious, and if it cannot be actively recalled, then it has become unconscious. These learned automatic mental processes are templates, and we have different ones for all sorts of situations, the more we have and the more nuanced they are the better. As an example, for most of us, most of our important formative life before the age of four is not consciously recallable. Yet it was in these early years we learned many important templates like intimate interactions, toileting, eating, playing, liking, loving and asserting ourselves. Many more form in the many years after and can be the basis of who we are and how we perform in different situations. The earliest experiences are by their foundational nature the most important and affect the way we create new templates.
Some important examples:
Why can the unconscious mind cause problems?
Unfortunately, we can adapt and create unconscious thinking processes and reactions in situations that are dysfunctional such as during traumatic experiences, neglectful or toxic environments. These learned reactions can then cause us to behave or think in ways that are dysfunctional in other situations and times to the detriment of our relationships, careers or our general progression through life. It also happens that we can have the unconscious tendency to fall back into dysfunctional relationships or situations that we have previously become adapted to, like a salmon finding its way from the open ocean back to the stream it was spawned in.
How does this type of therapy work?
Psychoanalytic therapy illuminates the unconscious processes in the mind, uncovering the hidden problematic thoughts and assumptions that influence our feelings and behaviors, often without our awareness. The fact that most unconscious processes developed in the presence of other people means that the presence of another person (the therapist) is necessary to bring these processes out into the light. This is why another name for the therapy is psychodynamic therapy because of the dynamic effect of the therapist/ client interaction. It is the changing and dynamic nature of this interaction during the course of the therapy that has the power to change the dysfunctional processes that the client is suffering from. Once the unconscious thought process has been brought to light (often called an "insight") then, through the continuing and dynamic interaction with the therapist in subsequent sessions, new adaptive processes can be developed and internalised so that they can supersede and replace the dysfunctional ones. This process is called "working through" and happens simultaneously and continuously with the development of new and deeper insights.
Should I try other techniques first?
If your issues are only recent, (i.e. not chronic or recurrent) or mild, and largely due to passing circumstances and you have not tried other therapies such as CBT or counselling, then I suggest you may want to do this first as it may be all you need. Speak to your GP and find a psychologist near you that can work through the circumstances that are troubling you.
If they are chronic and you have not tried short term therapies like the usual 10 sessions available with a psychologist via the Medicare Better Access program then I suggest you see your GP, get a Mental Health Treatment Plan and give it a go.
When should I consider Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic therapy?
The fact that chronic mental health problems or recurrent relationship/ career issues are often related to deeply ingrained and unconscious mental processes is why they are not easily identified or modified by self-help techniques or therapies that only explore conscious thinking processes. Furthermore, many brief therapies don't have the duration to work through, develop and embed new adaptive capacities. If you have tried to get help in other ways and found that you have not been able to adequately shift your symptoms or the problematic circumstances that you keep finding yourself in, then this form of therapy may be for you. Also, if you have a chronic mental health condition, dependency problem or personality disorder (other than a chronic psychotic disorder like schizophrenia) and would like to see if you can reduce or resolve the need for medication through insight, growth and capacity building then you may also want to consider this type of therapy.
What goes on in a session.
In sessions, the journey of insight generation unfolds through the exploration of spontaneous thoughts, and feelings, by saying what comes to mind (often called " free association"). This process is not about being directed or judged; rather, it creates a collaborative curiosity-based process where you're empowered to find and implement your own solutions, fostering growth, creativity, and independence based on the insights you have gained. In essence you can "find your voice".
Therapy is a personalised experience, and its duration varies according to individual needs. A safe and consistent space is essential for meaningful change, with regular sessions facilitating deeper exploration and transformation. The therapy must be consistent and frequent if it is to have the psychological impact to foster lasting and meaningful change. The goals of therapy are your goals, and beyond achieving them to your satisfaction (which is when the therapy ideally ends) the outcome is often a life lived with authenticity, empathy, creativity and resilience.
Sessions last for 45 minutes,
What does it cost and what do I need to bring?
Fees are approximately aligned with AMA guidelines and nominally adjusted annually. As a medical practitioner my fees are eligible for Medicare and the Medicare Safety Net. Combined this offers substantial coverage so that the overall out-of-pocket costs are low, with no limit on the number of sessions imposed by Medicare, thus ensuring accessibility to those seeking the deeper change that this therapy is known for.
No referral is necessary although any input from your treating doctor is welcome. I do need to know about your medication history and past treatment history which you could tell me about if you do not have a letter.
For privacy reasons I do not work with Work Cover as this generates a necessity to report to them (with the conflicts this creates both in the client and therapist) which I find counterproductive to the free and open discourse necessary for deep change.
Recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses have provided evidence supporting the impact of psychodynamic psychotherapy on neuroplasticity. These studies, utilizing fMRI data, have assessed changes in brain regions before and after psychotherapy. The findings demonstrate significant alterations in areas such as the inferior frontal gyrus and the anterior portion of the insular cortex, indicating the neuroplastic effects of psychodynamic psychotherapy. This suggests that such therapy can lead to functional and structural brain changes, supporting the idea that psychotherapy can have a lasting impact on brain function and structure. To see reference material click the link below