Christopher McLean

My original training was as a high school teacher, and I spend many years teaching English to adult migrants in Sydney. I have a B.A, and GradDip(Ed). Later, I trained in psychotherapy, gaining a Grad.Dip Psychotherapy/Couns.

My main practice is located in Blackheath, NSW. I do phone and Skype sessions for people from afar.

I practice a mindfulness-based psychotherapy which is influenced very strongly by Eugene Gendlin's Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. I am a Focusing trainer. This is very experiential work. It's body-aware. (See the Focusing Institute). Of course, the beautiful intricacy of the Buddhist psychology of perception has been central to my understanding of human life, for decades, and remains so.

However, another strong influence in my work – both in theory and in practice – is the work of Hameed Ali's Diamond Essence Approach. (He is better known to many as A.H.Almaas.) I was a student of Hameed's Ridhwan school, for about ten years, so this is definitely an influence in my personal life and in my psychotherapy work. My teacher was Jean Berwick, to whom I am very grateful.

(In my estimation, one of Hameed's important contributions to psychotherapy practice has been his unique way of acknowledging and attending experientially to 'holes.' See: Theory of Holes. He has also contributed an expansive spiritually-based interpretation of 'object relations' and 'self psychology' founded in immediate experiential inquiry. To spiritual work he has contributed a welcome re-balancing, so that individuation and the personal can be honoured in the spiritual work.)

The guiding principles in my work are always 'person-centred.' Here are some main features of my approach...

Dialogue

    "..we must not forget that the analytic relationship is based on a love of truth - that is, on a recognition of reality - and that it precludes any kind of sham or deceit." - Freud

Psychotherapy is a process wherein two people dialogue about - or meditate upon - the truth of human suffering and freedom as exemplified in the case of one of them. If the dialogue is grounded in present experience - if direct, experiential understanding occurs - then much that has hitherto been unobserved in oneself will become clear, and a change in the suffering can be expected - freedom will emerge.

Mindfulness & Body-Based Therapy

    "Mindfulness is a term borrowed from Buddhism. It is a state of consciousness in which present-time internal events can be observed without judgement. Mindfulness involves turning one's attention inward without preference or judgement."
    - Rob Fisher, Hakomi Therapist.

To cultivate mindfulness is to bring about inner change in a non-violent, non-coersive, gentle and safe manner. (Also, see Focusing) Experiential therapy is effective when the client is willing to cultivate attention to the present moment's experience, not only in the therapy time, but in the non-session time. Therefore, if practiced sincerely, psychotherapy is a way to use all circumstances to 'wake up' to who one truly is. To know oneself truly is to awaken from the trance of habitual functioning.

Deep Change Happens When Compassion Enters

    Compassion is sensitive to, and even appreciative of, suffering. .... [it] serves truth and understanding, the ultimate resolution to suffering.  - John Davis, a teacher of the Diamond Approach

In therapy we learn compassion for ourselves, as well as others. Compassion is the quality of allowing our suffering to come into the heart fully, so that it can be known directly with loving attention. Compassion allows the dynamic of suffering to be revealed. This truthful gaze dissolves suffering at its root. Once we have learned to hold our experience with compassion, we naturally open to others.

    "So compassion is the main therapy which can enable us to overcome all our difficulties whatever they are."
    - Akong Rinpoche, Tibetan Meditation teacher

In my work I support people to disengage from their inner judge, the critic, because this particularly bloacks insight and compassion.

Trust in the Flow of Experience

    "Given an environment that is safe, compassionate, and attentive, the human psyche will also naturally tend toward health. This means the therapist can rely on, and be guided by, [the client's] internal process of unfolding." - Rob Fisher, Hakomi therapist.

The flow of present experience has inherent order. It has its own inherent tendency toward wholeness. Therapy helps us learn to trust the inherent life-enhanicing direction of our experiences, to dwell in the organic unfoldment of our lives, when the present experience is liberated from distrust, control, skepticism, resistance, and so on. The practice of Focusing empowers this unfolding. When we go into our psychological depths, with no limit to the investigation, we find there our own universal, inexhaustible, life-loving nature.

Therapy as a Subversive Activity

    "Critical thought stands in the service of life, in the service of removing obstacles to life - individually and socially - which paralyze us." Erich Fromm, Humanist Therapist

If we free ourselves as individuals from our prejudices - from our emotional and intellectual conditioning - we can make a concrete contribution to the peace and happiness of our families, and that of local, national, and international communities.There are no private minds. All experience is public. Hence, therapy also involves being honest about the sources of oppression involved in the conditioning influences in society. There's no point in trying to free onself without a critique of the 'consensus trance' of society, and its harmful ways.  (Also, this kind of inquiry also contributes to the welfare of all other species with whom we share this planet.)

The root of the trance? The everyday narcissism of the unexamined human heart.

    "Using another as a means of satisfaction and security is not love. Love is never security; love is a state in which there is no desire to be secure; it is a state of vulnerability."  - Jiddu Krishnamurti, spiritual teacher

Spirituality  

As has been acknowledged by some prominent twentieth century psychotherapists (such as Carl Rogers and Rollo May): the deeper we go into psychotherapy, then the more the individual's questions become the big questions which have been perennially addressed by philosophy, theology, and spiritual practices.

To know yourself is to open more and more to immeasurable dimensions of experience.  Sooner or later the inquiry passes from the small self's everyday, troubling dynamics to attuning to the very nature and existence of the 'self.'  Therapy can move seamlessly from the personal to the existential, and thence to spiritual dimensions. Furthermore, this can be done as a secular inquiry - one need not follow any specific sectarian or religious path.