A well-trained, highly-sensitive psychotherapist provides a consistent, reliable and safe space in which an individual can take some time to express, explore, and reflect upon concerns, anxieties, hopes, and appetites - in the service of feeling healthily at home, both within with one’s own self, and in relation to others.
Who we are
Institute members are rigorously trained and fully qualified psychoanalytic psychotherapists, accredited by the Psychoanalytic Section of the Irish Council for Psychotherapy (ICP) and the Council for Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis College of the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Based in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and England, Institute members work in both private practice and a diverse variety of public sector settings, and are deeply committed to developing psychodynamic approaches to the understanding and treatment of emotional distress in individuals, groups, and organisations.
The aim of psychotherapy is to help people live more fully in the present - but in order to do so we need to be aware of the past while not being depressively trapped in it, and look forward to the future without fearing its inherent unpredictability.
Jeremy Holmes
What we do
Psychoanalytic, or psychodynamic, psychotherapy is a clinical approach that helps individuals move towards deeper understanding, and creative resolutions, of emotional and relational difficulties. Within the context of a secure and engaging therapeutic relationship, the influence of unconscious aspects of mental life can be safely and imaginatively explored - increasing awareness of ways in which underlying issues and past experience impact upon our ongoing experience of life and human relations, and shape our key relationship with our own selves.
A well-trained, highly-sensitive psychotherapist provides a consistent, reliable and safe space in which an individual can take some time to express, explore, and reflect upon concerns, anxieties, hopes, and appetites - in the service of feeling healthily at home, both within with one’s own self, and in relation to others.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS Eliot, Four Quartets
There is a growing body of research into the effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy (explore this in detail here).
In recognition of the tremendous psychological burden which NHS and social care staff have been working under during the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the Northern Ireland Institute of Human Relations would like to show their appreciation by volunteering their time to offer supportive psychotherapeutic sessions. The aim is to provide a secure space, in which both personal and professional responses to the current crisis can be freely expressed and reflected upon. It’s an opportunity to talk, to be listened to, and to think together about any ongoing mental health needs moving forward.
Psychoanalytic Art Group
This creative, playful space, facilitated by artist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist Cheryl Bleakley, was established in 2016. Group members have explored different artistic forms, including screen printing, painting, dance movement, and film-making. In 2019 the project produced a short film, The Clearing, which has been screened at a number of conferences and art festivals.
