Hello.
My name is Andrew Enever, and I am an experienced attachment-focused psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and occasional supervisor of psychotherapists.
I am well past conventional retirement age, but I am available for 6-8 hours a week for clients seeking personal therapy.
That's either online or in-person.
If you’re seeking consultation, supervision or advice about choosing a therapist,you are most welcome to contact me. I can give you 15-20 minutes at no charge.
That applies whether you are already in personal therapy, or are seeking personal therapy for a first or subsequent time.
I promise you a friendly and open welcome,
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 on 07957-295844 or by e-mail
I've 27 years experience of being a psychotherapist. It's been the greatest privilege of my life to do this work.
I've 77 years of being a human being: of being all kinds of things for all kinds of people, including being a son, a sibling, a student, a partner, a father, a car worker, a shop steward, an IT technician, a therapy client, a grandfather as well as all kinds of bits and pieces, including being a failure, to myself and others on the way.
On the way, I've taken on some very different trainings; had a huge diversity of clients, and, inevitably, developed my own very idiosyncratic style.
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’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.
Until very recently, I was an officer of the Hallam Institute of Psychotherapy I was Chair for a number of years.
Between 2001 and 2006, I was a member of the governing board of UKCP., and,for four years of that, I was Chair of the Registration Board of UKCP.
During my time as Chair, we had to make political decisions about whether those of our own membership who had done psychoanalytic or child psychotherapy trainings should be entitled to use the term "psychoanalyst" or "child psychotherapist" to describe themselves,
These were quasi political decisions, for those who had left the UKCP to form the British Psychoanalytic Council felt that these titles belonged to them alone.
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've worked with many people with body-based symptoms: chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, non-epileptic seizures, Crohn's disease, functional dystonia.
It has been a puzzling journey: the occasional spectacular result; but often just a very conventional, supportive role for people struggling wit constant pain to make a 'go' of their lives.
Just recently, I've been reading "The Immune Mind" by Dr. Monty Lyman - an extraordinary book which links immunology, neurology, psychology and biology, to give the most convincing explanation I've yet read of what is going on for those suffering these chronic conditions.
Alongside that, 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 have recently been 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.
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 and/or those suffering chronic illnesses, in forming reading and/or study groups.
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Availability
I am offering a free online consultation, to those seeking personal therapy. I offer a sliding scale of fees.
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:
This may sound glib, but my key learning has come from the multitude of clients I have seen over the years.
They have all helped me feel the relevance of John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Judith Herman, Janina Fisher, Stephen Mitchell, Sandor Ferenczi, Pierre Janet.