Craig Newnes
Clinical PsychologistI am a dad, gardener and consultant clinical psychologist. I have trained at the Institute of Group Analysis and the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and completed my clinical psychology training in 1981. My first supervisor was Dr Dorothy Rowe who remains a friend and advocate of my work in critical psychology and psychiatry.
I am editor of the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy and commissioning editor for the Critical Division of PCCS Books. So far PCCS have published This is Madness and This is Madness Too edited by myself, Guy Holmes and Cailzie Dunn, Personality as Art by Peter Chadwick , Spirituality and Psychotherapy, edited by Simon King-Spooner and me, The Gene Illusion by Jay Joseph and Beyond Help by Susan Hanson, Alec McHoul and Mark Rapley and Beyond Prozac by Terry Lynch. Details of these books are available on the PCCS Books website. With Nick Radcliffe, I recently co-edited Making and Breaking Children's Lives and won the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) annual Human Rights Award in 2005 for over 25 years of speaking out about State Psychiatry and Psychology.
I am editor of Clinical Psychology Forum, the house journal of the British Psychological Society's Division of Clinical Psychology. I am the longest serving member of the DCP National Executive Committee with a special interest in ethics, common sense and valuing personal experience as evidence. I am Chair of the BPS' Psychotherapy Section.
As a therapist I believe that almost all our difficulties come from our past, our present circumstances and luck: I have no patience with systems which blame people for a lack of will power or responsibility or claim that their life problems are mental illnesses caused by genes or brain chemistry. My therapeutic contract involves offering an hour or two's listening followed by my best guess as to what kind of help a person needs. If I think therapy will help I offer the choice of a different therapist. If the person chooses me I offer to see them as long as they want. This can involve seeing someone for very few or many sessions. These sessions are free and gladly given