Carsten Dernedde


I trained in Skan Body-oriented Psychotherapy, Streaming Theatre and Body-Psychotherapeutic Group Work in 1989-93 with Loil Neidhoefer and Petra Mathes in Hamburg, Germany.

I am also an EMDR therapist. Particularly Attachment-Informed EMDR, which I studied under Mark Brayne, with its rich, creative relational warmth is a second ‘spiritual home’ in psychotherapy for me.

As well as a therapist, I am also a GP in a 5-Partner practice in the Norfolk Broads, which keeps me close to life’s realities and keeps my theoretical understanding tethered to the necessity for science.

Since I trained, I have followed with fascination a vast acceleration in research that has brought great benefit to the theory of psychotherapy.

Thanks to cross-fertilisation between neuroscience, behavioural science, ethology and psychology we now have a detailed understanding of how the body and mind develop and function differently under conditions of safety versus threat, and how humans interact differently when they have learned to do so in secure versus deficient attachment.

I am proud to be trained in a ‘Reichian’ tradition of therapy – Wilhelm Reich’s intuitive discoveries from the 1920’s really work and create a deep sense of safety, energy and connection.

Much as Reich couched his discoveries in scientifically untenable theories, often when I am presented with cutting-edge present-day science – for example, on the neurobiology of how impaired eye contact makes it difficult to feel safe – I find this fits very well with my experiences with Reichian Bodywork.