Ben Lloyd

I came into this kind of work in 2003 through a post in a NHS children's in-patient service; then in a NHS in-patient unit for mothers who were experiencing post-natal depression and psychoses; and also as a co-facilitator of a mother-infant bonding service for mothers who had received custodial sentences.

I then studied for my MSc in developmental psychology at the Anna Freud Centre / UCL (www.annafreud.org.) and trained as an ACP accredited child and adolescent psychotherapist (www.childpsychotherapy.org.uk), at NSCAP (www.nscap.org.uk).

I have worked in Leeds CAMHS (2005 - 2010), Manchester CAMHS (2010 - 2013) and Bradford CAMHS (2013 - 2020). At Bradford CAMHS, I was the Consultant Psychological Therapist and Clinical Lead for Psychological Therapies. Amongst many other duties I supervised and trained other practitioners and I developed a specialism of working with adults in CAMHS; typically parents.

I have worked in private practice from my office in Saltaire / Shipley since 2010. From 2014 I began training as an adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist with NEAPP (www.neapp.org.uk), and I qualified in 2021.

In 2020 I became Director of NSCAP, a post I held until this year (2024) when I left the NHS fully. Now, I am no longer a member of the ACP and I work wholly in independent practice with adults under my BPC registration.

I am approved as a training psychotherapist for people undergoing their own clinical training as psychotherapists on ACP child and adolescent psychotherapy trainings, and for those in training as adult psychotherapists on the Tavistock D58 and D59 clinical trainings. I am also able to offer personal therapy to people whose training in different disciplines i.e. Play and Art Psychotherapy, is a requirement.

I am an experienced clinical supervisor and teacher, and although my practice is one of clinical work, I still occasionally offer teaching to trainee psychotherapists e.g. at the Tavistock where I have taken the Ethics and Private Practice seminars for final year M1 trainees since 2021, work I also enjoy very much.

I no longer use a website for my private practice, and people get in touch with me either through this forum, or more commonly through word of mouth and personal recommendation. There is much written about the prospect of, and experience of, psychoanalytic therapy, which can be viewed from the BPC or elsewhere. For my own practice I particularly note the following:

- A conscious problem can be considered as a solution to an unconscious difficulty.

- People come to see me for all sorts of different reasons and from all sorts of backgrounds.

- I work only in person with new clients and consider that in-person work is vital to maintain the integrity of our therapeutic work together.

- I am trained to, and prefer to, work with people more 'intensively', meaning more than one session a week. This can feel like a significant commitment in the first place, but usually people experience the benefit of the more regular encounter quite swiftly. This way of working helps embed sustained benefits of developing an understanding of oneself, contributing to the capacity to enjoy a deeper and more meaningful life.