Marcus Bowman PhD : Psychotherapy & Counselling

Marcus Bowman PhD : Psychotherapy & Counselling Individual Psychotherapy and Counselling in Cork city. Marcus Bowman PhD:

I am a psychotherapist working in private practice in Cork since 1997.

I work with adults (18+ years) on an individual basis. I treat clients suffering from a wide range of emotional problems, including depression, generalised anxiety, panic attacks, relationship problems, sexual problems, obsessive compulsive disorder, addiction, post-traumatic stress, transient delusional states, & so on. I am available to see clients Tuesday to Friday from 12 Midday until 8.00 in the evening. Also if required on some Saturday mornings by arrangement. Therapy sessions usually last about 50 minutes. Clients usually attend for therapy on a weekly or fortnightly basis, depending on the severity of their symptoms & their general circumstances. My fee per therapy session depends upon how often a client is attending me. I charge less for those attending more frequently. I also have reduced rates for clients who are receiving disability benefits or who are on a minimum wage. If you would like to meet me to discuss a possible course of psychotherapy please telephone me or text me (087 654 5327), or contact me by email (pangurcottage@gmail.com) or by Facebook Message.

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There are different kinds of psychotherapist who work in slightly different ways. The jargon of the profession can be confusing for people not involved in it. I am what is referred to as a psychoanalytic therapist. This means that I work simply by talking with my clients & by getting them to discuss whatever is foremost on their minds & what is worrying them most on the day of the session. As a psychoanalytic therapist I believe the most important thing is to understand the psychological conflicts that are active within the client. I work by establishing a personal relationship with the client & through that relationship help the client to see more clearly how his or her conflicts are causing the distressing symptoms. By clarifying conflicts that the client is not able to see before coming to therapy, the therapy helps the client to resolve such conflicts. As a therapist my primary emphasis is to encourage the autonomy of the individual patient. Emotional health means something slightly different for each one of us & each of us has to work to discover what that is. My approach to psychotherapy is secular. I belong to no religion & don’t consider that emotional problems have religious solutions.

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In 1993 I completed a master’s degree at University College Dublin on Nietzsche’s Psychology. In 1997 I was awarded a doctoral degree, on Psychoanalysis & Semiotic Theory. In 2002 my book The Last Resistance was published by The State University of New York. This is an examination of the scientific basis of the theory & practice of psychoanalytic therapy. I am an Associate Member of the Irish Psycho-Analytic Association in Dublin (https://goo.gl/v2NRBf).

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Throughout my working life the two main influences on my thinking have been Nietzsche & Freud. Nietzsche is the first depth psychologist in the modern sense of that term. He lays the conceptual foundation on which almost all modern psychotherapy rests. He is the first to stress that as human beings we all displace our basic instincts along symbolic pathways. This means that our underlying motives are always undergoing disguise & we have to work hard all the time to discover what is really driving us. Nietzsche emphasises in particular how religion & morality have been used to disguise our basic impulses, in many cases making them harmful to the best interests of ourselves & those around us. This is something of which we see multiple examples in Irish society & culture in the past & in the present. The importance of Freud in psychotherapy is of course second to none. From Freud we learn the crucial perspective of looking at each individual as being in a state of constant evolution & change, while at the same time as continually reworking throughout adult life the impressions & experiences of infancy & childhood. All serious psychotherapy is characterised by this developmental approach first articulated by Freud. Through his studies of the operation of displacement & psychological defence it was Freud who first gave us the means to translate the language of mental illness into that of everyday life. This was the great revolution that overcame the fear & stigma of mental illness that had plagued man since prehistory. To the extent we are now able to be honest about the problems of mental illness, which touch all of us at some point in life, it is very largely due to Freud’s extraordinary work.

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All the most original and important parts of psychoanalysis result from Freud's analysis of himself. His greatest gift w...
29/01/2024

All the most original and important parts of psychoanalysis result from Freud's analysis of himself. His greatest gift was his ability to generalise from his own case onto that of others. All this has been underlined for me again from reading Max Schur's classic study: Freud - Living and Dying, originally published 50 years ago.

“Government regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don’t, they habituate man to expect teach...
16/07/2021

“Government regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don’t, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own.” - Wilhelm von Humboldt“They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson…...

A consideration of psychotherapy as an ethical discipline and how this impacts the issue of professional regulation.

The classical analysts got one thing right: you cannot “cure” people by merely sympathising with them on their misfortun...
02/02/2021

The classical analysts got one thing right: you cannot “cure” people by merely sympathising with them on their misfortune. Beware pity & Mitleid. But they got one thing wrong: you cannot “cure” people if you withdraw from them emotionally. The therapist has to be an incitement to them to achieve a higher state of harmony & repair. Pace Freud, the task of the analyst is not to be a “mirror” to the patient....

The classical analysts got one thing right: you cannot “cure” people by merely sympathising with them on their misfortune. Beware pity & Mitleid.  But they got one thing wrong: you cannot …

Nietzsche on Shame Shame exists wherever there is a “mystery”; but this is a religious concept, which in the older times...
01/02/2021

Nietzsche on Shame Shame exists wherever there is a “mystery”; but this is a religious concept, which in the older times of human culture had a wide extent. ... Sexual relations, for example, which as a privilege and adyton for adults were to be withheld from the view of children, for their advantage. ... In the same way, the whole world of inner conditions, the so-called “soul”, even now for non-philosophers is a mystery, because this has been believed to be, for countless ages, of divine origin and of being worthy of divine intervention: as a result it is an adyton and arouses shame....

Nietzsche on Shame Shame exists wherever there is a “mystery”; but this is a religious concept, which in the older times of human culture had a wide extent. … Sexual relations, for example, w…

Das Leben sei so hübsch, daß man völlig für gleichgültig achten könne, wem man es zu verdanken habe: denn es schriebe si...
28/01/2021

Das Leben sei so hübsch, daß man völlig für gleichgültig achten könne, wem man es zu verdanken habe: denn es schriebe sich doch zuletzt von Gott her, vor welchem wir alle gleich wären. Life seemed to me so beautiful that I thought one should regard it as completely a matter of indifference to whom one owed it. And in the end it came in any event from God, before whom we were all equal. Goethe Dichtung und Wahrheit, I 80

Das Leben sei so hübsch, daß man völlig für gleichgültig achten könne, wem man es zu verdanken habe: denn es schriebe sich doch zuletzt von Gott her, vor welchem wir alle gleich wären. Life seemed …

“When I am asked how one can become a psychoanalyst, I answer, through the study of one’s own dreams.” (DP 76)
27/01/2021

“When I am asked how one can become a psychoanalyst, I answer, through the study of one’s own dreams.” (DP 76)

“When I am asked how one can become a psychoanalyst, I answer, through the study of one’s own dreams.” (DP 76)

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? - A Personal View, Part 11 Psychoanalytic therapy and CBT are the two most important tra...
24/01/2021

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? - A Personal View, Part 11 Psychoanalytic therapy and CBT are the two most important traditions within psychotherapy. But even here, because labels can be so misleading in this field, in trying to draw distinctions within the field, considerable caution is required. Contemporary CBT is more nuanced than old-style behaviourist psychology, and over time it has also, in spite of itself, come to be influenced, often quite significantly, by the legacy of psychoanalysis and the talking cure in general....

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? – A Personal View, Part 11 Psychoanalytic therapy and CBT are the two most important traditions within psychotherapy. But even here, because labels can be so m…

“That is my sorrow: they have lied reward and punishment into the foundation of things, and now also into the foundation...
24/01/2021

“That is my sorrow: they have lied reward and punishment into the foundation of things, and now also into the foundation of your souls, you who are virtuous. But like the boar’s snout, my words shall tear open the foundation of your souls: a plowshare I will be to you. All the secrets of your foundation shall come to light; and when you lie uprooted and broken in the sun, then will your lies also be separated from your truths.” - Zarathustra, from On the Virtuous.

“That is my sorrow: they have lied reward and punishment into the foundation of things, and now also into the foundation of your souls, you who are virtuous. But like the boar’s snout, my words sha…

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? - A Personal View, Part 10 What psychoanalytic therapy and all these other related thera...
23/01/2021

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? - A Personal View, Part 10 What psychoanalytic therapy and all these other related therapies do need to be distinguished from however are those forms of psychotherapy and counselling that focus less on treating the person as a whole, and on the conflicts between his emotions within him, and more on his different symptoms in isolation, with the aim of treating them in an analogous way to physical symptoms, like a broken bone or a viral infection....

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? – A Personal View, Part 10 What psychoanalytic therapy and all these other related therapies do need to be distinguished from however are those forms of psycho…

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? - A Personal View, Part 9 All of us, whether we are therapy patients or not, have to res...
21/01/2021

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? - A Personal View, Part 9 All of us, whether we are therapy patients or not, have to resolve the question of what is the meaning we are going to give to each day of our lives, and to the rest of our lives. We have to resolve it even if we do so by trying to evade it and just drift along with what seems the easiest course....

What is Psychoanalytic Therapy? – A Personal View, Part 9 All of us, whether we are therapy patients or not, have to resolve the question of what is the meaning we are going to give to each d…

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My background & general philosophy of therapy

Marcus Bowman PhD: I am a psychotherapist and counsellor working in private practice in Cork since 1997. I work with adults (18+ years) on an individual basis. I treat clients suffering from a wide range of emotional problems, including depression, general anxiety, panic attacks, relationship problems, sexual problems, obsessive behaviour, addiction, post-traumatic stress, transient delusional states, and so on. I am available to see clients Tuesday to Friday from 12 Midday until 8.00 in the evening. Also if required on some Saturday mornings by arrangement. Therapy sessions usually last about 50 minutes. Clients usually attend for therapy on a weekly or fortnightly basis, depending on the severity of their symptoms & their general circumstances. My fee per therapy session depends upon how often a client is attending me. I charge less for those attending more frequently. I also have reduced rates for clients who are receiving disability benefits or who are on a minimum wage. If you would like to meet me to discuss a possible course of therapy please telephone me or text me (087 654 5327), or contact me by email (pangurcottage@gmail.com) or by Facebook Message. -

There are different kinds of counsellors and therapists who work in slightly different ways.

I work simply by talking with my clients & discussing with them whatever is foremost on their minds & what is worrying them on the day of the session. As a therapist I believe the most important thing is to understand the emotional conflicts that are active within the client. I work to establish a personal relationship with the client and through that relationship help the client to see more clearly how his or her conflicts are causing the distressing symptoms.

As a therapist my primary emphasis is to encourage the personal emotional freedom of the individual client. Emotional health means something slightly different for each one of us & each of us has to work to discover what that is. - In 1993 I completed a master’s degree at University College Dublin on Nietzsche’s Psychology. In 1997 I was awarded a doctoral degree, on Psychoanalytic and Semiotic Theory. In 2002 my book The Last Resistance was published by The State University of New York. This is an examination of the scientific basis of the theory and practice of psychoanalytic therapy. I am an Associate Member of the Irish Psycho-Analytic Association in Dublin (https://goo.gl/v2NRBf).