Beyond the Therapy Room

Daniel Angus (Sydney Australia) is a Psychologist and board approved clinical supervisor who splits his time supporting early career helping professionals, seeing clients in his private practice and fulfilling his commitments to a range of organisations, one of which is as Deputy Commissioner for the New South Wales Mental Health Commission. Daniel was formerly managing Headspace Services, a busy adolescent mental health service supporting young people in both a Primary care setting and those with first-episode psychosis in Western Sydney. More recently, Daniel held a National position with Canteen Australia providing support to Canteen’s Psychosocial Staff employed to support young people impacted by Cancer. Daniel has worked in a range of public and non-government services and continues to provide consultation to various boards and committees. Daniel has a strong interest in creative recovery, is focused on collaborative treatment approaches, and has trained specifically in Narrative therapy, and is particularly passionate about creative and engaging approaches to adolescent mental health.

Jenny (Jennifer) Freeman is inspired to engage our field as we respond to calls for environmental/social healing and justice. Meeting with people of all ages in independent practice, group, & school settings, she loves collaborative creativity, interweaving Narrative and Just therapies with somatic, expressive arts, & energy therapies. She co-hosts narrativeapproaches.com & Reauthoring Teaching’s Earth’s Environmental Crisis & Opportunity. She collaborated with Dr. Akansha Vaswani-Bye on a Mad in America podcast and contributed a blog & interview for The Psychotherapy Networker, and other media interviews. Earlier work includes Playful Approaches to Serious Problems: Narrative Therapy with Children and their Families, Freeman, Epston, and Lobovits (1997); Enter the Magic Sleep Garden (2007), audio/booklet, & multiple chapters in edited books..Jenny is emeritus faculty of John F. Kennedy University. As a member of a Samoan community, she has engaged in collective practice in Samoa, and contributed the essay A Living Legacy to Whispers and Vanities: Samoan Indigenous Knowledge and Religion (2014) and the AFTER THE WAVE film. She is working on a book/podcast on interspecies communication, envisioning humans in healthy, just, restorative ways of interbeing with nature.

Due to my father's job, I grew up in a cinema. I grew up with people, images, and stories. I became a psychologist, a narrative therapist, and a documentary photographer. I work with people, images, and stories. I am trying to keep a political view on every aspect of my life. The ideas of justice, freedom, equality and solidarity are informing the way I think and act. During the most difficult time of my life, someone took my hand and told me, Don't be afraid; we will walk together. Those words made me a therapist. Lately, I think of my professional role as a transition facilitator—something like a boatman. I have a daughter. Her name is Kallirroe. In Greek, that means 'nice flow.'

Poh Lin Lee is a Chinese Malaysian Australian woman who comes to her practice through multiple experiences and relationships as a narrative therapy practitioner, social worker, co-researcher of trauma/displacement, writer, teacher, film protagonist and creative consultant.

Since 2004 Poh has been engaged in therapeutic co-research with people and communities responding to themes of experience such as family and state violence, displacement (from rights, land, home, body, identity, relationships), liminality and reclaiming practices of staying with experience and preference. Creative and therapeutic fields intersected for Poh whilst working with people seeking asylum within a film project with director Gabrielle Brady, Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018).

Peggy Sax, Ph.D. (Cornwall, Vermont), is the founder and Executive Director of Re-authoring Teaching – the global learning community of narrative therapy practitioners, teachers, and enthusiasts that is represented on this website. Peggy carries a steadfast commitment to preserving, developing, and extending the legacy of narrative therapy. She loves to collaborate with colleagues across narrative generations, co-creating quality training materials and together building a narrative learning community. Having apprenticed herself to narrative therapy since the early 1990s, Peggy also works in independent practice as a Licensed Psychologist, consultant, international teacher, and international trainer. She is the author of several articles and the book Re-authoring Teaching: Creating a Collaboratory. Creating this online series is a dream come true for Peggy: working with people she profoundly respects, persevering to develop excellent courses together, and thereby contributing to a field she deeply values.

Frankie Hanman-Siegersma (they/them) is a descendent of Dutch, British and Irish settlers, living on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land in narrm (Melbourne, Australia). Frankie is a narrative therapy practitioner within a peer-led LGBTIQ+ suicide support service and with folks whose lives have been shaped by the effects of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and other structural inequalities. Frankie is interested in the movement of neoliberal, individualistic therapy towards activism, and collective liberation. They enjoy facilitating opportunities for ritual, poetry, music, and pop culture in their work alongside community members.

Kitty Thatcher is an Australian clinical psychologist based in Santiago, Chile, and was first introduced to narrative therapy ideas through the Masters in Clinical Psychology for children and adolescents at the Universidad de Chile. Following this she undertook the fantastic narrative apprenticeship with David Epston, Kay Ingamells, and Tom Carlson. During the pandemic she returned to Australia and worked as a provisional psychologist in rural NSW then Sydney to gain her registration there under the supervision of the wonderful Daniel Angus. Moving between mental health systems in Chile and Australia has only encouraged her nomadic bent, and she is fascinated by how being between, immersed, and at times running out of language shapes our connections with ourselves and the world (and vice versa!).

Akansha Bye-Vaswani Ph.D., was introduced to narrative practices in Mumbai when she began working at Ummeed Child Development Center in Mumbai in 2010. Here she was also introduced to principles of family-centered care, early intervention, and community-based advocacy. Her interest in systemic change took her to San Diego State University where her studies in marriage and family therapy strengthened her commitment to developing clinical practice through the lens of de-colonizing, feminist, and postmodern practice. Her doctoral work at UMass Boston, focused on drivers of institutional corruption in psychiatry and solutions for reform, particularly the practice of deprescribing and rational prescribing grounded in informed consent. She is currently an Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine where she works on the implementation of family-to-family support programs for families of persons managing psychosis.