About me...

I am an IoPT psychotrauma theorist and therapist.

 

I studied Gestalt Psychotherapy at the Metanoia Institute in London between 1987 and 1992, during which I also studied the work of Carl Rogers. Over the years I have studied and been interested in the work of  John Bowlby (Attachment and Bonding), David Groves ('clean language'), Eugene Gendlin (Focusing), Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Bert (Solution Focused Brief Therapy), Peter Levene (Somatic Experiencing), Bert Hellinger (Family Constellations), Bessel van der Kolk (trauma), Jonathan Shay (Viet Nam war trauma), Babette Rothschild (trauma), the work of Virginia Satir, and many others.

 

I worked as a Gestalt Psychotherapist from 1989 until 2008-9 when I formally switched to only working with Ruppert's ideas, then known as Multi-Generational Psychotraumatology, During my time as a Gestalt Psychotherapist I co-ran therapy groups for ten years with another Gestalt therapist, and it was during the latter part of this time that I got interested in the work of Bert Hellinger.

 

When I first got in contact with Hellinger's work, even though I was fascinated, my first thought was "How do you do this in the individual '0ne-to-one' session?" So in 2010 I published a book that was mainly about Family Constellations, making a particular focus of the 'one-to-one' session. In this book (In the Presence of Many) I attempted to make a synthesis of Family Constellations with what I was learning from Franz Ruppert, but in the end I realised this was not possible (for an essay on the reasons why I came to this conclusion refer to Part 3, Chapter 11 in The Heart of Things, see below.)

 

However, another aspect of this book was an attempt to look at the business of being a constellations facilitator because I found the 'resonance' process of Family Constellations fascinating, but as a person with a Gestalt background, I was not comfortable with much of the Family Constellations facilitation that I saw, seeing it as overly managing and giving the practitioner too much power and authority. This did not sit well with my Gestalt background, Gestalt being more interested in honouring the phenomenology of the process rather than managing the process.

 

I ran trainings in Family Constellations from 2002 until 2010, during the last couple of years attempting to include Ruppert's ideas with Family Constellations. Finally, in 2010, I walked into the workroom to start a new teaching course in Family Constellations, and told the group that I could not do that; I could not teach Family Constellations because I did not believe in it anymore. However, if they were interested in staying with me for the course I would start teaching what I was learning from Franz Ruppert. Everyone stayed for the whole course, and we had a truly wonderful course together. From then on until this year I have run what I call 'Education Courses' based on Ruppert's work. 

 

After that I left Family Constellations behind and devoted myself to Ruppert's work. I organised the translation of pretty much all of his books into English and edited the translations. This forced me to really study what he was saying so that I could understand it properly, and put it into an English version that would be comfortable to read. This was an extraordinary amount of work, but I ended with a very in-depth understanding of what he was saying and developing.

 

In 2013 I published my next book, The Heart of Things: Understanding Trauma - Working with Constellations. This book was my first attempt to put the work of Ruppert into my own words. In this book I tried to set the historical environment into which Ruppert was putting his work. Much of this information I gained from the book entitled Trauma and Recovery by Professor Judith Herman. In addition I explored the attitude of the Military, particularly in the USA, towards trauma. And, apart from this I wrote about Ruppert's work as it was up to that date at that time (still called Multi-Genrational Psychotraumatology), and at the end of this book I included an essay comparing Family Constellations to Ruppert's work, making clear the reasons why I thought a synthesis of the two was impossible.

 

In 2014 I decided to write a 'handbook' of this theory. I wanted to produce a simple book that conveyed the basic principles of  the work (still MGPT) in a chatty and friendly way. This was titled Becoming Your True Self: a handbook for the journey from trauma to healthy autonomy.

 

I was inspired for the format  and tone of the book by Richard Bach's book Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, from which I use some quotes on my Home Page. In that book he talks about The Messiah's Handbook, which is a collection of simple thoughts to be considered about life, healing and being truly oneself.

 

Another inspiration for this book was The Red Book of Gestalt by Gaie Houston, which also attempts to give the basic ideas of Gestalt in an easy and friendly way.

 

This 'handbook' Becoming Your True Self seemed to be an instant success, in part I think because of its chatty style and simple cartoon drawings (thanks to Karen MMcMillan). Almost immediately Ruppert wanted it translated into German and managed to get it published with the title Zurük in Mein Ich. It has since been published in Russian, Dutch and Norwegian. The English original version had to be republished and updated in 2016 and 2017 as Ruppert updated his theory, and it was during this time that he changed the title to Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Therapy.

 

In 2020 I talked with Franz Ruppert, just after he had published Love, Lust and Trauma (which to all intents and purposes completed the theory of Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Therapy) about the idea that we needed a 'textbook' giving all the theory and principles of practice in one place. Up until this time each of Ruppert's books proceeded from the previous one, thereby showing in detail the development of his theories over the years, but to this date there was not a book that clearly included the end result of his research.

 

I thought at the time that this might be the next book he wrote, but it wasn't! And so I thought I would take up the challenge. This resulted in the book entitled Trauma and Identity: Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Therapy, Theory and Practice.

 

In this book I tried to bring together the complete theory of IoPT as described in the sequential books by Ruppert, together with some of my own thoughts about his theories, and a detailed account of the practice developed by Ruppert, known variously as The Intention Method, The Self-Encounter Method, and the Self-Exploration Method. As a psychotherapist by background of some 3o years I felt myself up to this task. This book has been well received and has been translated into German and Dutch.

 

Over the years I have facilitated in-person workshops and/or training courses in the following countries: USA, The Netherlands, Turkey, Singapore, Romania, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Israel, Ireland, in addition to the UK. 

 

To date I mostly work with IoPT practising student/practitioners. I see us as ongoing students for the rest of our lives; students of ourselves and our own traumas, students of humanity, and students as IoPT practitioners. Our evolving as competent practitioners never ends; we are students for life. in my view that is what life is... lifelong studentship.

 

I continue to be fascinated by the work, and by the incredible traumas and experiences people have had to endure, often from the very start of their lives, when they are so excruciatingly vulnerable and they are unable to defend themselves. I think that traumatisation is in effect a considerable component of the human experience and existence, even to consider that all humans, by the fact of our extreme vulnerability for the most part of 18 or so years, are likely to be traumatised. Traumatised mothers and fathers are extremely likely to traumatise their children, simply by their lapses in attention and their own vulnerability from their own history.  It's not, in my view, helpful to blame parents, but it is helpful to see and honour the reality. Traumatised people are traumatised people. It's not their fault if they were traumatised as babies and children, but it is their responsibility as adults to see reality as it is, to honour the truth of their own trauma and find ways of healing, so that their existence is not so troubling for their own children.

 

Franz Ruppert's book, Who am I in a Traumatised and Traumatising World, traces the individual fallout of personal traumatisation to the global impact, in politics, diplomacy, the law and justice, health systems, social systems, corporate systems. This includes the upholding of the  condition that we all live under every day, the assumption of the patriarchy, where 50% of the world population holds a position of power, authority and control of the other 50%, particularly in social, economic and political spheres, spheres of extreme influence and power. In my view traumatisation influences and often directs through survival strategies and the perpetuation of perpetrator-victim systems, everything we read in our daily newspapers, and hear through other media. We can do otherwise, but really only if we recognise the underlying influence of trauma, recognise our own trauma, and make a serious commitment to ourselves, each and every one of us.

 

Franz Ruppert has said that the aim of our explorations of our traumas is towards 'living a good life'. I think this means living a life reasonably free of re-triggered trauma, where most of the time we can feel stable, present and untroubled, and we have what we want, and we want what we have.

 

Part of this is our continuing interest and studentship of life.

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