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Courtenay Young is a fully accredited and registered psychotherapist (see 'Associations') with around 25 years of professional experience. He works in several different modalities, has experience in a number of different clinical settings, and with a wide range of different client groups. He has been actively involved in several professional associations in psychotherapy, leads workshops internationally, edits journals, and has written several articles, chapters and books on psychotherapy, as well as writing poetry. Please use the purple banner or the links in the top right corner to go to the different areas of this website. For a fuller general description of my psychotherapy work, see below, or click on the boxes under "Psychotherapy" in the burple banner. For details (and copies) of articles written, please go to the Articles section of the website.

General Description:

     “I work in a combination of Humanistic, Transpersonal, and Body-Oriented Psychotherapy modes, with adults, adolescents, and occasionally children and families. Whilst very familiar with traditional clinical work, I am also interested in and dedicated to complementary medicine and holistic approaches, especially involving personal empowerment. Over the years, I have also had quite extensive experience in a number of different settings:- with adolescent girls in a secure residential hostel in Greenwich; in a psychiatric half-way house residential setting in Brent; in one of the first "Care in the Community" projects, as a Mental Health Day Centre worker, also in Brent; as the resident psychotherapist at the Findhorn Foundation, an educational & spiritual community in north-east Scotland; in Morayshire, as a director of a charitable company providing day services for long-term psychiatric patients and people with ongoing mental health issues; and, more recently, in the NHS in and around Edinburgh offering psychotherapy & counseling to primary care referrals in clinics, in doctors surgeries, and in departments of Clinical Psychology.
     Whilst I was originally trained and accredited as a body-oriented and humanistic psychotherapist, I have been working fairly eclectically and using many concepts and techniques from the field of brief psychotherapy, family systems, cognitive behavioural therapy, as well as some concepts from object relations theory and from psychodynamic or transpersonal psychotherapy; really whatever seems appropriate to the person and conditions.
     I have been working with people in (fairly extreme) emotional and psychological crisis states. So, accurate diagnosis, evidence-based techniques, measurement indexes, examination of dysfunctional thought processes, and the setting of achievable goals are fairly critical, as well as utilizing a large range of methods for reducing stress levels and anxieties; both self-induced, social and environmental; keeping proper records; making formulations, and being a solid & informed presence for the person in crisis and the people around them.
     I have supervised other staff members and practitioners and been in fairly consistent and appropriate therapy and supervision myself. I have taught courses to psychotherapists in training and to other staff members.
     I have worked quite extensively in the social work and community mental health field and with a number of different client groups: parents & children; adolescent girls; psycho-geriatrics and dementia; self-harming & suicidal clients; people in psychotic episodes & people with severe & borderline personality disorders; people being re-habilitated out of long-stay psychiatric hospital; people with chronic mental health issues (ex-psychiatric patients), learning difficulties; alcoholics and drug addicts trying to stay in the community; as well as people with chronic illnesses, marital disorders, abandonment, abuse issues, criminal convictions & imprisonment, major life transitions, break-downs, sectioning and psychotic episodes, severe debt, chronic illnesses, epileptic fits, dissociated states, and various types of spiritual crises.
     These experiences have also involved working with Social Services, psychiatrists, medical doctors, the Police, courts, community mental health teams, employers, foreign tour guides, enthusiastic 'helpers'; as well as with the patients' families and friends, and, on odd occasions, in some (very) strange settings!