Registration deadline: 13 November

As this event Gerry will do what many people thinks he does best and spend a lot of time talking about himself!

He will tell his story of growing up in Northern Ireland with a catholic working-class identity and how this and subsequent experiences at personal, professional and politico-social levels (including ‘The Troubles’) have reflexively helped shape his journey as a ‘person practitioner’.

He will attempt to story how the meanings he has attached to significant happenings and critical moments have evolved over time.

This story will include and hopefully be enriched by other voices – those of clients, students, supervisees and colleagues – that will help lend testimony to the values, principles and beliefs that have guided Gerry’s practice over the past four decades.

Last, but not least Gerry hopes that workshop participants will be able to make some reflexive connections between his story and their own!

Speaker Biography:

Gerry was born and bred (as we say) in Northern Ireland and has been a practitioner here from the 1970s.

He is a clinical psychologist and systemic therapist and has worked in a range of contexts and with a range of client populations.

He spent many years in the juvenile justice system before moving into the NHS to head up psychology services in the Western Health and Social Care Trust.

His main clinical specialism was that of CAMHS and he has extensive experience of running and teaching family therapy courses both in the Health Trust and Ulster University.

He took early retirement from his NHS post in 2011 and set up his own company and, Over the past eight years (of so-called semi-retirement), his work has included delivering psychological therapies to the prison population in Northern Ireland, undertaking contract work for the Western Trust, private clients, providing supervision and heading up family therapy teaching at Ulster University.

While deriving great satisfaction from these pursuits he is in the latter stages of fully retiring from his professional career and moving on to other challenges!