About Rob
Rob Waygood
Psychotherapist
Working in the Jungian, integrative, transpersonal, and process oriented modes.
Advanced Diploma Transpersonal Psychotherapy.
Dip. Supervision. B.Sc. Psychology. M.Sc. Counselling Psychology – Groups. (UKCP Ret’d after 28 yrs).
Transpersonal means: through and beyond the personal. It thus addresses the immediate experience of the everyday self or ego, but also reaches into the deeper inner worlds as well as out to a collective universal experience beyond the ego.
Having graduated in honours Psychology in 1970, I worked for a large US accountancy and management consultancy firm in the City of London, becoming a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in the late 1970’s. But these beginnings did not satisfy my yearnings to understand the inner world of my psyche, and to that end I journeyed to the East for 1½ years, where I studied meditation and Vedanta in the Himalayas. I returned to the UK and bought a smallholding in West Wales, taught myself craft pottery, continued my meditation practices, studied my dreams and the writings of Carl Jung, and worked in a voluntary counselling agency.
I began my training in transpersonal psychology in 1981, eventually moving back to London to train full-time with Barbara Somers and Ian Gordon Brown at The Centre for Transpersonal Psychology. It was like arriving home: the Jungian/transpersonal perspective seemed to confirm and expand my inner experiences since childhood. My vocation called me. I graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Psychotherapy and an M.Sc. in Counselling Psychology, and began a practice in psychotherapy and counselling in the mid 1980’s. I was the Coordinator of Counselling and Education Services at the Centre for Health and Healing at St. James’s Church Piccadilly, until I moved to Oxford to parent together with my wife, and to build a full-time psychotherapy practice in Oxford. I taught transpersonal/Jungian psychology in both Oxford and London and in the mid 1990’s became one of the Directors of The Centre for Transpersonal Psychology in London, then a UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) Member Organisation.
During this time the pull of the wilderness, both inner and outer, took me frequently back to the Himalayas where I recharged my batteries of spiritual practice. With an artist friend we set up and ran biannual Vision Quests in the mountains and lakes of North Wales, for men and women who wished to re-vision their individual path in life. Some chose to take the seer role to help re-vision a future for their community.
I have always been interested in the transpersonal perspective in all life, not just in the field of psychotherapy. Despite often tripping up on the more down to earth levels, my wife and I live a life of trying to constantly remain aware of the deeper, transpersonal and soul levels in our daily round. It is this personal goal, coupled with the experience of the search of so many of my clients, supervisees and friends for this awareness, which most informs my life and what I teach.