Professional history

I am fortunate to have studied a double degree in Psychology and Anthropology in my undergraduate degree. While the psychology degrees are heavily regulated and standardised, Anthropology was the opposite and gave me the opportunity to develop my own interests and learn how to study systems of knowledge and take a critical lens to psychology. This was especially pertinent as the standardized knowledge taught in psychology did not reflect the world in which I lived, in regional and remote Australia.

I wanted to be an Anthropologist, however I moved to lovely Tasmania and there was no anthropology department there. So, I ended up a Clinical Psychologist with a very sharp cultural lens and a habit of questioning everything to construct some form of meaning. Anthropology introduced me to phenomenology and the work of the thinkers left out of standardised programs such as Jung and Rollo May, which is central to my psychological practice . It also introduced me to ‘epistemology’, and the rivers of thought and knowledge that flow through history and religion. In turn this has given me a framework to understand the monotheistic push for therapists to belief in one form of therapy as the one true therapeutic god, and to be able to resist the pressure to subscribe to this.