Who am I?

I am a 48 year old Englishman living in France. I was raised in Holland and in Brighton, England. I have a French wife, a son and a daughter. I have dedicated the last 25 years of my working life in France to making the workplace somewhere in which people feel fulfilled and alive. Having exercised various corporate "People Development" roles, I have gradually evolved from training large groups of managers on leadership skills, to building team cohesiveness, to accompanying senior managers in individual coaching sessions.

Around the "mid-life crisis" age, I came to the realisation that the rich coaching activity, with all its merits, was often only scratching the surface for many people who had more deep-rooted issues and concerns. I decided to leave what many may have seen as a socially desirable management position as Global Training Director in a large multinational energy company to become a university student again. With business studies behind me, I embarked on a 3 year degree in Psychotherapy at the "Sigmund Freud University of Paris". The experience was life-changing. Instead of accompanying managers, I had work placements in hospital psychiatric clinics dealing with a wide range of "personalities" and in CMP ("Centre Medico Psychologique") dealing with autistic children. During my studies, I learned a vast array of humanistic, behavioural and psychoanalytic approaches to therapy, and practiced them in a clinic set up charitably for those from deprived backgrounds. I then moved on to specialising in an approach called "Gestalt". This holistic and existential approach, which focuses on contact in the here and now, and whose theoretical whose roots (Frédéric Perls from Eastern Europe, Paul Goodman from USA), particularly resonate for me in the light of my own anglo-European background. Ever since then I have continued to enhanced my training and supervision in this field.

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During that period, I was initiated into the joys of fatherhood, with both a son and a daughter. Becoming a father makes you revisit much of your self identity. My Psychotherapy thesis has been dedicated to the "Power of Paternal Transmission" - the writing was in itself a useful therapy in better understanding what life decisions may have been related to seeking of fatherly approval, or father figures. Becoming a father and my pyschotherapy studies have been an immensely positive experience in helping to bring me closer to my own father, who recently passed away - may he rest in peace.

Today I am a Gestalt therapist, strongly engaged in bringing meaning and fulfillment to my clients with my sense of caring, curiosity and respect.