The Burden of the Ego-Ideal and the Refusal of Development

Born in 1953 in what was then the North Riding of Yorkshire. He was brought up on Teesside and later in Sheffield before studying General Arts at Manchester University. In the early part of his working life, he was a writer, cartoonist and animator, working in advertising, journalism and educational publishing. He married in 1986, and the couple settled in Lancashire, where they brought up their two daughters. In the mid-1990s, he began to train and work as a couples therapist for Relate in Burnley, and this experience led him to undertake further training, in Manchester, with Group Analysis North and the North-West Institute for Dynamic Psychotherapy (NWIDP). In 2006, he was awarded the NWIDP's Diploma in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, which enabled him to secure registration with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. He began work in private practice in 2007. He subsequently registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council as a psychodynamic psychotherapist through the auspices of the Tavistock Society for Psychotherapy. He is also a member of the North of England Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (NEAPP), in the psychodynamic psychotherapy category. He is a deputy chair of the Operational Committee of the NEAPP. He is in private practice with The Retreat, Manchester, and in his own consulting room in commercial premises in Manchester city centre.