About me
I’m a psychologist based in Vevey, Switzerland. I work with individuals and groups, in English, Turkish and French.
My way of working is existential-phenomenological and psychoanalytic, which is a rather long way of saying that I am interested in how you actually live, as opposed to how you think you ought to, and in what you find yourself doing without quite knowing why.
Where I started
I began in private practice in Istanbul, where I trained at the Existential Academy and worked in counselling services for children, adolescents and university students. Children are, I think, the best training: they have not yet learned to be polite about being misunderstood.
When I moved to Switzerland I began working in residential treatment, and kept a private practice alongside it. Moving languages is instructive for a therapist. You discover how much of what people mean was never in the words.
What I studied
I hold a master’s degree in clinical psychology, with postgraduate training in existential psychotherapy and further training in psychoanalytic, group analytic and family approaches. I am undertaking a doctorate in counselling psychology and psychotherapy at Middlesex University.
My research is about psychologists working in complex, high-risk settings: what the work does to the people who do it, which is a question the profession has not always been keen to ask.
What I do now
Since 2022 I have worked at Clinic Les Alpes in Montreux, where I am now Senior Psychologist. I provide individual psychotherapy, run interpersonal therapy groups, supervise colleagues and contribute to the clinical team’s training.
Alongside this I keep a small private practice, which is where the work described on this site takes place. It is small because I would like to be able to think about the people I see.
Recognition
I am a federally recognised psychologist in Switzerland, a member of the Federation of Swiss Psychologists (FSP), and a member of the Federation for Existential Therapy in Europe.
Therapy gives people time, which is the one thing everyone says they haven’t got.