Therapy Journey

My interest in psychology goes back a long way. Although I never read them my father had books about C G Jung and Sigmund Freud. At the seminary where I trained, a Marxist member of staff criticised me for not taking part in his lectures. I was not good at his subject, logic, and was wary of his Marxism. I was sent to see a priest psychotherapist, who pronounced that because I had experienced breaks in relationships it had affected how I got on with people generally. Later I recollect saying to a staff member that I would like to study the connections between literature, history and psychology. I was told that I would have to go to Rome for that!

Several years after I became a priest I went to work at London University Catholic Chaplaincy. Something must have been stirring because I went to see a nun counsellor, but I found her unsympathetic. After a few years I went to East Sussex to be close to my elderly family. During I that time I went through a bad period. A neighbouring priest suggested inter alia that I visit a counsellor in Hove. I went to her for about a year or so. It wasn’t a wholly satisfactory experience and a drive of about forty miles. I was relieved when I left my post and took a sabbatical at a priory near Oxford. A devastating family disaster occurred when my 32 year-old niece died of drink and drugs.

I returned to London and stayed in my first parish while I waited for a posting. One day I went to see a former parishioner but I could not gain entry to her block of flats. In circumstances which C G Jung would call synchronistic I went to see Grizelda another former parishioner who lived around the corner and who was a psycho therapist. She was about to go out, but I asked for a therapist I might visit. My friend replied “You want to become a psychotherapist.” As a result of this encounter I started visiting a psychotherapist in south London. It was an awkward journey geographically but I persevered. Hypatia as I will call her worked for the NHS using what was called CAT, a programme of about 25 sessions. As we approached the end of the sessions I asked Hypatia what would happen when the sessions came to an end. She let on then that she was also a Jungian. And so, we carried on for six years altogether. She introduced me to Jung’s so-called autobiography Memories, dreams and reflections. I felt an immediate connection. I could see in Jung aspects of my own character which I could relate to, especially his identification with the past. I was not alone. I joined the Guild of Pastoral Psychology and attended refined conferences in Oxford,

After a some while I began to think about studying to be a counsellor. This is a common enough phenomenon, a kind of a poacher turning gamekeeper. At first, I tried for an MA in psychology of religion, but what I was really after was to practice myself. Here I had to limit my ambitions. I was attracted to a course at the University of Essex but it was too much of an upheaval, and so I settled for studying at Richmond College of Further Education. I was a year there and did another year this time at Kingston University. Following a meeting with Maura O’Sullivan I put myself up for a course under an Indian lady, Ranee who specialised in what is known as Transpersonal Therapy. This appealed to me because of its spiritual connections. Transpersonal therapy had no particular founder, but owed its origins a number of writers who had been drawn to the India and the sub-continent. However, shortly afterwards she fell out with the college and invited us to attend her course at her own house in Greenford. Although Ranee was idiosyncratic I learnt a lot but when we reached diploma stage when she suddenly upped her fees and we nearly all left.

At a certain stage I stopped going to see Hypatia. It was a difficult break for both us but I had felt I had to move on, though we still kept in touch tenuously. I found Hypatia enigmatic and she reminded me of some kind of white witch living deep in a mysterious forest. She laughed when I told her this.

Myself and another student were able to join the Diploma course back at Richmond College. Eventually I got through that and started picking up the necessary hours I needed by seeing clients. This was at a centre in Feltham where the manageress was a case herself. After I got my diploma I carried on seeing clients at Feltham and took up private practice but it was tiring and lonely.

My time in psycho land has influenced me a lot and I hope it has made me humbler priest. As a student psycho I had nowhere to hide and it helped me to lose any grandiose ideas about the clerical state.