RELATIONSHIPS
Why work on relationships
For individuals
For couples

HOW I WORK
What happens in a session
'Relate Licensed' means
Training & Proffessional Memberships
Biography

ONLINE HELP
Relate Fact Sheets
Relate Books
FAQ's Links

OTHER SERVICES
Supervision Referrals CONTACT
Where to go next
London locations and fee's

Biography

Chris MacGovern started his professional life not in the world of talk therapy, but in marketing and development of financial trading systems.

The city of London having become familiar he setup a company in his thirties providing marketing services to financial institutions and the cluster of consultancy and financial technology companies around them. This led into the development or financial regulatory risk management systems.

An early childhood interest in psychology led him at forty to train with Relate via their couples counselling post graduate diploma. He acknowledges that this was partly driven by seeking to understand and account for the impact of his own more fragmented than connected extended family. Over the last eight years this work has become a full time profession and since then his philosophy has been that to be good in this business requires constant attention to how you practice. This has led him to train in another modality with a post graduate diploma in systemic therapy in 2008 and then onto an MSc with University of London’s Birkbeck College. This qualified him as a Psychotherapist working with individuals, couples and families. In parallel with these courses he also trained with Relate as a clinical supervisor. After a years break he started his Phd in September last of 2011.

His early placement in Wimbledon's Relate centre offered him extensive experience of working with couples facing the dilemmas of coping with relationships, families and the demands of professional careers or self employment. This has gone onto form the core of his expertise and is now offered privately in three locations covering central London. These include rooms in the previously familiar city of London, rooms north of Oxford Street, and rooms near Earls Court.

His week starts with his role as a clinical supervisor at Relate Centres on Mondays and then onto private client work which is restricted to Tuesday's, Wednesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays he works in a voluntary post as a Psychotherapist working with an NHS team in South London helping families effected by mental health challenges.

His Phd is exploring how families manage when, because of the working partners career, they are moved to another country for a number of years. He completed an early pilot study as part of his MSc in 2010. This suggested that for many families this was both a huge challenge, and one for which there was very little support. This led to him working with couples and families facing this challenge as a specialist service in his private client work. Now as part of his Phd he is taking it further. This involves research to develop effective therapeutic interventions and publications for families and consultancy services for the companies involved in the geographic relocation of employees.

Dec 2011