I joined the London Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity Practice (LGSRDP)

I have joined the London Gender, Sexual and Relationship Practice (LGSRDP),  a new and exciting group of psychotherapists and counsellors specialising in working with gender, sexual and relationship diversities. We have different backgrounds and ways of working, and many of us are also linked with Sense about Sex and with Pink Therapy.

This extends rather widely to LGBT people, or, as it sometimes is called to be more precise, LGBTQIA+. It also means having a positive and certainly non-pathologising perspective on kink (BDSM), considering it as diversity, forms of human sexuality and pleasure-seeking. And it extends to all possible diversities in relationships, including non-monogamy, polyamory and open relationships. Finally, it is related to my view that sex work is work, and that sex workers are very welcome to see me, and can refer to their work as easily as anyone else can.

To some readers this may sound far-fetched, and I am well aware that there are colleagues in the psychotherapy and other psych professions who hold some of these behaviours and identities very differently. But this is my considered view; it has a long history; it is shared by many eminent thinkers, researchers and professional practitioners; and it is better scientifically underpinned than other positions.

I believe that the scientific evidence is very strong. And there are more general reasons making this in my view an ethically compelling position to take.

As I don't believe this human diversity makes any of the people included above fundamentally different from others, as human beings, the basics of my way of practising are the same, and there is a complete overlap in how I work with my more general practice. Every individual is unique and different as a person, and I go far in working in very different individual ways with my clients. But the principles have much continuity.

As the great H.S. Sullivan wrote, "... we are all much more simply human than otherwise...."

I have no wish or plans to specialise only in this field. I hope that this simply means that more people will be certain that they are entirely welcome to visit me and to talk about whatever they want, whatever concerns them, and that they will be listened to and heard.

I will respond with pleasure to your comments or questions.