Services

Existential Psychotherapy

Existential therapy is an optimistic form of psychotherapy heavily influenced by the existential philosophers including Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre. Determinism is rejected and instead the emphasis is on free will, choice and freedom within existential limits. This means that although none of us can choose the conditions of our birth and our genetic make-up and we cannot control all external events, nevertheless, we can choose our own responses to our existential situation. Existential therapists work phenomenologically to help clients to understand their own contributions to what is going on in their lives and thereby to begin to use their own freedom to a greater extent. The therapist helps clients to identify and elucidate his or her own choices in life and each client decides for him or herself when, and if, to make any changes.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Psychoanalytic psychotherapists believe that experiences in childhood continue to influence adult life. These experiences result in hidden assumptions and worldviews held onto since childhood that may be hindering your freedom to lead an authentic life and preventing you from reaching your full potential. A psychotherapist can help you to identify these false presuppositions and over time and with hard work they may be discarded.

My work is heavily influenced by Freud from whom I take his phenomenological observations and his practical advice as regards framing the work, however I do not follow Freud’s deterministic theories and I am more likely to refer to the Sartrean concept of “bad faith” than the Freudian “unconscious”. Nevertheless, I follow Freud in aiming to interpret dreams, fantasies and actions in order to help my clients to uncover the truth about their own desires, needs and hopes to allow them to be in control and take charge of their own lives.

Skype or Telephone Sessions

Although face-to-face sessions are the most effective, if you cannot attend in person, perhaps because of your travel schedule or for health reasons, I am able to provide Skype or telephone sessions.

Supervision

I offer supervision from an existential perspective. I provide a non-judgmental space to discuss your client work phenomenologically. Psychotherapy is a moral enterprise and I focus on the ethical and philosophical dimensions of the work. I see supervision as a parallel process to psychotherapy and therefore my aim is to work with supervisees collaboratively to assist them to greater awareness in all aspects of their work.

Office Address

My consulting rooms are located at

17 Riverview Gardens,
Barnes,
West London,
SW13 8QY

Contact us

020 8746 3905

enquiries@angelabuxton.co.uk