I began my career as a therapist when I read R.D. Laings The Politics of Experience.  That was in 1968.  However, my formal career didn't begin till 1970 when I enrolled in the Counselling Psychology program at UBC'S Faculty of Education.  While enrolled in that program I worked during the summers at The Maples: The B.C. Youth Development Centre.  This was a very stimulating time to be working in mental health.  I was exposed to Fritz Perls' Gestalt Therapy, Arthur Janov's Primal Scream; as well as Moreno's Psychodrama.  I worked there for approximately six years. 

Then I returned to UBC  to complete my Master of Arts degree.  My thesis was titled: Identity: an Act not a Fact.  I wanted to clarify that identity was a fluid process rather than a static thing, a constant becoming rather than a completed project.

I completed my Doctorate in the Philosophy of Education Program at Simon Fraser University in 2012. My thesis explored the relationship between one's preconscious experience and one's conscious meanings—when they worked together and when they operated in parallel but disconnected psychic spheres.

Since that time I've been employed as a college instructor at both Douglas College and at Vancouver Community College.  In addition I was a family therapist attached to three separate programs that were serving childen and youth and their families.  Since 1980 I've been in private practice--initially on a part time basis, beginning full time in 1985. 

Around 1990, I was introduced to the writings of Jacques Lacan.  His thought has had a profound effect on my work.  I learned from him that all mental activity took place in one of three 'registers': the symbolic, the imaginary and the real.  The imaginary register involves those images and scenes that have been imprinted on us when we were young and now serve as unconscious templates for our current experience.  The symbolic register is dominated by language and includes our explicit understandings--that which we've been able to move from the unconscious into the conscious realm. The register of the real is predominate whenever we are interacting in the world.  The world poses a challenge and we respond the best that we can.  Our way of understanding that challenge will be conditioned by the imaginary templates and the breadth of our symbolic universe.  Interacting with the real presents us with the opportunity of identifying our limiting assumptions