After nine years spent with his Polish-born parents in England and Africa, Chris came to Australia where he has lived happily since in Melbourne.

In school, he wanted to become an artist or researcher, and with the latter in mind, pursued medicine, only to discover clinical work and patients’ stories more engaging. He gravitated to psychiatry early on in his post-graduate career, and has never looked back. Always looking for the “why?” in people’s troubles, he in turn gravitated to psychotherapy, although he keeps abreast of biological research and treatment, and does his own prescribing.

Initially psychoanalytic in orientation, but aware that no one model adequately grasps the human mind, and has become more eclectic, embracing research findings and current thinking, abandoning the analyst’s couch for face-to-face psychotherapy. In recent years, he has taken a special interest in dissociation following severe early childhood trauma, and studied the Structural Dissociation and other current models for such problems. In this he is particularly influenced by the work of van der Hart and Nijenhuis.

Chris has become an important part of our professional peer environment and is highly regarded by his senior and junior colleagues. He has established a comprehensive peer support system to provide additional value for his patients as appropriate from cognitive-behavioural intervention, specialised physical treatments such as phototherapy, ECT and TMS, and treatment for substance dependence.

The frustrated would-be artist remains an amateur so far, with a keen interest in music and the visual arts. His early years left a particular love for African-influenced music, and he plays Brazilian percussion and keyboards. He is a keen photographer, enjoys digital image processing and printing of his images, with the first public exposure of his work in a group exhibition in 2019 .