Hello. Welcome to my Website.
My name is Andrew Enever, and I am an experienced attachment-focused psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and supervisor of psychotherapists.
As I am close to retirement, I am not taking on anyone new for personal therapy.
But If you’re seeking consultation, supervision or advice about choosing a therapist,you are most welcome to contact me.
That applies whether you are a therapist yourself, or already in personal therapy, or are seeking personal therapy for a first or subsequent time.
I promise you a friendly welcome, no matter which part of the world you might live in.
I live and work in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, and much as I prefer face to face contact, I also do my work using Zoom and Whatsapp.
I can be contacted by e-mail or by phone on 07957-295844
I’ve been a practising psychotherapist since 1997. I carried out an attachment focused psychoanalytic psychotherapy training at the Bowlby centre in London between 1995 and 1999. I achieved UKCP registration in 2000.
I am registered with the UKCP as a supervisor, and with the Bowlby Centre as a training therapist.
I’ve carried out further training in EMDR which I have studied at all three levels.
I completed a full Sensorimotor Psychotherapy training in 2015, and I’m now a certified Sensorimotor practitioner.
I practised for 13 years in London before moving to Sheffield in 2011 where I worked at the Royal Hallamshire hospital in the Neurology Psychotherapy service. That service specialised in the treatment of functional neurological disorders – non-epileptic seizures, chronic pain, functional dystonia, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, etc.
I returned to private practice in 2015 and moved to Leeds in 2020. I now have a private practice based in central Leeds and at my home in Oakwood.
I continue to be an officer of the Hallam Institute of Psychotherapy of which I was Chair for a number of years.
I was a member of the UKCP governing board from 2001 to 2006 and for four years of that I was Chair of the UKCP’s Registration Board where I oversaw complex negotiations and discussions over the use of the title “psychoanalyst” and the title “child psychotherapist”.
About Me
I include this section by way of illustrating some of the major influences in my own life.
Although grammar school and university-educated, my venture into adulthood as a student led me to riots and demonstrations, as well as self-sabotage in education. Attached to those on the far left who seemed to feel so certain about their beliefs, I was able for a time at least to shore up my own self-doubt.
So my early working life was in Midlands car factories, working on the shop floor. There I listened for the first time to astonishing tales of criminality, of child abuse and neglect. I lived in an ordinary street in an ordinary family, but those were extraordinary times. Strikes, confrontations, the Vietnam war, apartheid in South Africa: all these things consumed me.
At that time, the 1970’s those around me were perhaps taken in by my professions of interest in radical social and political change. But it was what I now call a “false self”. As political and emotional “defeat” followed, I slowly began to realise that the unhappiness I felt inside on a daily basis originated in my own disappointments in myself.
A retreat into solitude occurred: marriage breakup, loss of regular contact with my own children, a new career where I could remain solitary – the world of computer programming, which sustained me in a financial sense for many years.
But a rebuild was going on at the same time: a 4-year part-time history degree, and lots of personal therapy – unusual for the times.
That led me eventually to my psychotherapy training, and a consequent understanding that so may of those things in my life that had “gone wrong” could be turned into valuable lessons. Like coal into diamonds, they became the jewels that helped me become a more thoughtful, more humble and a wiser man.
The process continues. There is always something new to learn about myself and others.
Life Experience
I am interested in history generally, and, in particular, the history of psychoanalytic theory, its evolution and its connections with modern trauma theory, particularly around dissociation.
I am currently reading a book called “The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis”. This book embraces the writings of Sandor Ferenczi, Pierre Janet alongside the better-known figures in psychoanalysis such as Freud, Jung, Fairbairn, Klein, Winnicott, Guntrip. It has sections on modern trauma theory and body psychotherapy.
It's a book I feel I can identify with, both practically and philosophically.
It’s written by members of the American Relational School,founded by the late Stephen Mitchell.
Current Interests
Work With Me
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Public speaking
I am a competent public speaker, and I welcome the opportunity to talk to groups, large or small, about my work.
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Reading and Study Groups
I am very interested in joining with other professionals in forming reading and/or study groups. This I feel is a way of both deepening understanding and connection with others.
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Availability
I am nearing retirement and therefore not able to take on new clients but I am available for consultancy, seminars, reading groups and supervision.
I invite my clients to look at the key relationships in their lives and examine together how those relationship have shaped them, paying particular attention to life-changing moments, when people’s beliefs about themselves became embedded, shattered, re-shaped.
I think of myself as belonging to the Interpersonal tradition of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which is now called Relational Psychoanalysis The classical mode of psychoanalytic psychotherapy was a ‘one-person’ model, where the analyst mostly remained silent, and abstained from offering support, advice or information about his own moment-by-moment feelings.
This idea of ‘frustrating’ the client was designed to elicit emotional responses from the client which would draw out of them their deepest anxieties, thus enabling them to voice those fears and anxieties perhaps for the first time in their lives. This ‘blank screen’ approach enabled clients to ‘project’ their feelings, no matter how extreme, onto the analyst, and have them accepted.
However, many practitioners realised that this approach was not sufficient, and possibly even quite dangerous, particularly for those clients who had experienced severe trauma. As a result, there was a turn to a two-person psychology, where the analyst would feel free to disclose certain aspects of their feelings about the client.
Now, I integrate my understanding of these traditions, with techniques from the body-centred approach. So I’m always curious about my own and my clients’ bodily responses both inside and outside the therapy room.
For many people, the contents of their minds can be baffling, disturbing, contradictory. They can feed shame, worthlessness, and self-doubt. These feelings can be frequently tracked in body symptoms, in posture and in prosody.
Key influences:John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Judith Herman, Janina Fisher, Stephen Mitchell, Sandor Ferenczi, Pierre Janet.
But most of all,my clients.