Therapy without cures, diagnoses, or false promises of everlasting happiness — only attention with care and solidarity.
Orientation
I am a trained and registered Psychologist in South Africa, and more recently I completed my Doctoral training in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis through the Global Centre for Advanced Studies, based in Ireland. I have a longstanding disdain for mainstream psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry—otherwise known as the “psy-industry”.
This means that I am unlikely to relate to you in terms of diagnosis, treatment, or cure. I am more likely to be interested in the experience that you are having (in your own words); the circumstances of your life that give rise to this experience (especially the relationships that have shaped your life); and in exploring ways in which this experience can be dealt with. We can do little about the things that have happened to us, but we can reflect on how these events have shaped our responses.
What This Work Is Not
Despite my formal training in psychology and psychoanalysis, my work does not proceed from the assumption that human suffering is best understood through medicalised categories or technical interventions. My psychoanalytic training has made me attentive to the ways in which our lives are largely shaped by forces outside of conscious awareness and personal control. At the same time, my engagement with existential philosophy insists on the question of agency—however limited—within a largely determined world.
Any meaningful form of self-determination is unlikely to appear as individual mastery or self-optimisation. It is more likely to emerge as a revolutionary spirit in solidarity with others: an awareness that our struggles are inseparable from the socio-political and cultural conditions in which we live. As Camus wrote:
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
Philosophical Grounding
My Doctoral thesis explores the meeting place between existential philosophy, atheist Buddhist practices, and psychoanalysis. Central to this work is a rejection of soteriological thinking—that is, the promise that our struggles can be redeemed, resolved, or transcended through some final form of salvation.
Rather than false prophecies of relief, snake-oil cures for the inherent anxiety of being human, or assurances that things will “get better,” I am interested in the courage required to remain with our struggles, and with what it means to exist in this particular moment of human history. This orientation understands therapeutic work as learning how to care for, rather than cure, our inevitably entropic (or transient) existence. This has led me into the study of Negative Psychoanalysis under the supervision of Professor Julie Reshe, who certified me as a Negative Psychoanalytic practitioner.
How I Work
My personal style has become one of encouraging a revolutionary spirit in those I work with—something that feels especially necessary in the current global climate. In practice, our work often revolves around questions such as:
- What are the circumstances of my life that I am struggling to face?
- How do I tend to avoid these struggles?
- How might I find more viable ways of being with them?
- Is there any way—personally or collectively—to intervene in the circumstances of my own life?
These are not questions aimed at resolution, but at honesty, attention, and responsibility.
Therapy as an Event
Therapy is an attempt at insight into who we are and why we are as we are, as well as an editing suite for who we wish to become. Most often, it is a combined effort: the therapist attempting to meet the client where they are in this moment of their life, and the client attempting to articulate that moment as it is lived.
This inevitably involves how the client arrived at this point, and what they imagine—or struggle to imagine—for the future. I do not work with diagnostic labels. The theoretical basis of my work is influenced by existential phenomenology and thinkers such as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Camus, Foucault, and Lacan. The combined influence of these traditions is a sustained attention to how we language our experience.
My therapeutic style carries something of the flavour of R.D. Laing. My primary focus is to be with you in your struggles, and to work together to find a way of continuing from where you find yourself now. I am increasingly immersed in the contemporary field of Negative Psychoanalysis under the supervision of Professor Julie Reshe, approaching the wider psy-industry—with its promises of happiness, normality, and behavioural control—with great caution.
This May Not Work for You If…
This work may not be a good fit if you are seeking quick solutions, diagnostic clarity, symptom management, or reassurance that things will return to “normal.” It may also not suit you if you are looking for prescriptive techniques, behavioural correction, or a therapist who positions themselves as an expert with answers to your life. This work asks for patience, reflection, and a willingness to remain with uncertainty, contradiction, and discomfort—often without guarantees.
In the end...
I do not try to fix you or explain you away. I do not offer cures, labels, or promises of happiness. What I offer is a space to slow down, to speak honestly about your experience, and to think together about how you have come to be where you are—and how you might continue from here. The work is about attention, care, and responsibility within the limits and pressures of contemporary life.