Tommaso Palumbo – Psicologo

I’m a psychologist with 25 years of professional experience, living in London since 1994 and I receive by appointment in the City and in Hampstead.

Then, starting from my approach. The therapists usually are formed by following training courses that reflect the operating model of the approach’s founder. So, for example, there are those who follow Freud and practice psychoanalytically or psychodynamic, there are those who follow Jung and practice in an analytical way, there are those who follow Rogers or Berne and practice in the humanities one (Person Centred o Gestalt), there are those who follow Ellis or Beck and practice in cognitive-behavioral way, etc.

Despite the substantial differences that exist between these approaches in how they relate with the customer and try to solve their problems, they all have something essential in common: it is the client who has to adapt to the model and not the model that conforms to the customer.

So the point is not which model works best, but which model is most suitable for the particular customer problem. Therapists who have married their model they believe, in good faith, that it can be applied to a wide range of problems, but it is not so.

For example, People who are suffering from stress and anxiety, they want to learn how to prevent, manage and overcome their stress and their anxiety, and in this case an analytical approach would be surely unnecessary and probably harmful.

Here I am not follow “a priori” any models, however, I proceed: first I use one or two sessions to better understand the type of my client’s problem and then I can choose, in all freedom, model and therapeutic tools that are more useful in the specific case.

The goal is make sure that the customer doesn’t develop a dependence on the therapist and  on the sessions, but rather to encourage its autonomy, helping him/her to know him/her self better, and teaching how to practically deal with and resolve the causes and symptoms of discomfort.