Geoff Lamb MSc MAHPP
UKCP Registered Psychotherapist
My involvement with psychotherapy dates from the mid 1970's when I began to study applied behavioural sciences at North London Polytechnic (Now University of North London); completing my Diploma in Applied Behavioural Sciences in 1978. I started my training in Reichian Psychotherapy with Tricia Scott in 1980 and began practising in 1985. I work with individuals, couples and groups and have trained counsellors for East Surrey College since 1986.
Currently, I run an on-going men's group, maintain private practices in London (
At the Crypt Psychotherapy Centre) and East Grinstead, offer supervision and am a founder director of New Paradigm Training Ltd, which offers counselling training at certificate and diploma levels. I hold a first class honours degree in neuroscience and a master's degree in health psychology.
My therapeutic practice is based on the work of
Wilhelm Reich. He believed, amongst other things, that human beings have an innate capacity to regulate themselves and their energy, and to direct that energy towards their own self-fulfilment. Like Reich, I believe that human beings are innately creative, resourceful and courageous and have a need of and capacity to form, loving relationships.The goal of therapy is to support the client's energy in its movement towards
creative and fulfilling experience and expression.
Problems often arise because, for all sorts of reasons, our self-regulatory mechanisms and our perception have been distorted by early experience. We are very often unaware of the level and nature of this distortion. We only know that we are not getting as much out of life as we would like and that we are uncomfortable with certain feelings (anger, sexual desire, vulnerability and so on) and with certain experiences. We may try to make ourselves more comfortable by all sorts of means such as compulsive work, alcohol, over-eating, affairs etc., but we usually find that the relief is only temporary.
Sometimes we try to hide the parts of ourselves which we consider to be negative; not realising that these are vital components of our essential humanity. When we begin to discover these hidden facets, either because they emerge naturally or in the process of therapy, we may experience shame and guilt. This is, I believe, because the original positive impulses towards self-fulfilment have, under the influence of events in our early lives, become distorted into a form which really is unpleasant. As a Reichian psychotherapist, my job is to support my client’s feelings however they may emerge; believing them to be transitions whose eventual end is the pursuit of a fuller, more satisfying life.
Although I am very much aware of my own and clients' bodily and energetic process during my work, I have always used verbal as well as bodywork interventions. This is because I believe it is important to work with character as well as with physical energy. My work has evolved considerably during the years I have been practising and will hopefully continue to do so.
As a full member of the Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners, I work within that organisation's code of ethics and am fully insured.
Click on the links below for details of specific areas of my work.
