Our Ethos

More Than A Quick Fix

For a long while those of us who were working as counsellors or psychotherapists in the NHS and charitable agencies realised something had gone wrong. The auditors and accountants had won, and the space for proper clinical counselling, psychotherapy and psychoanalytic work was being constricted.

Everything is now audited – including ‘happiness’ and “growth”. Auditors and accountants wanted to see if counselling & psychotherapy treatments in London were delivering ‘value for money’. What therapy could deliver ‘happiness’ in the quickest time and for the least money? How do you find that out? (How can the government save money on counselling service provision?

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) finds that out, by directly asking the patient’s to mark the psychotherapist or counsellor’s performance, and to comment on whether they feel better. And even better, CBT treatments only take some twelve meetings to implant supportive ‘good ideas’ into the patient’s minds! So, the treatment ends with a “positive” outcome for the patient (maybe for the institution as well). Although CBT can be very helpful to “manage” symptoms in the short term, it struggle to provide clients with a more long lasting solution.

Counsellors or psychotherapists using the psychodynamic model would operate differently. Psychodynamic psychotherapists do not think that ‘happiness’ can be audited, and distant from the idea that a good outcome for a counselling is that you are just the same as everybody else!

Whereas the NHS and charitable models increasingly use CBT and deviant variations of psychotherapy-counselling that promotes ‘short-term’ work, The Koan Practice was formed as a space where psychotherapist and counselling clinicians can carry on doing work beyond surface. At Koan, we believe in working with people at a deeper and more sustainable level, empowering clients to achieve a more holistic and enduring solution to the challenges that they face.

Your unique story

A psychotherapist’s Job starts with listening. Everything else comes after that. Psychotherapists listen other people’s life stories on a daily basis. So, experienced psychotherapists have listened a lot of stories. They would have “heard it all”. Yet, “good” psychotherapists pay attention to what is unique in each client’s story – the complexity of destress and suffering particular to the individual. That’s why therapists need to listen well. Therapeutic work in a frame of psychodynamic psychotherapy aims to address the underlying causes of psychological distress rather than inducing behavioural modification. Our therapists are trained to work on each individual’s own difficulties, to remain objective as well as being supportive and to facilitate communication in a way that helps encourage the client’s insight into the roots of their difficulties. After all, we are all unique. You are unique.

Affordable Fees for Open-ended Treatment

Private counselling/therapy is not cheap. The average fee would be around £80-£100 per meeting in Central London. In some practice the fees are in excess £150 per meeting for once weekly meetings. A lot of people cannot afford those fees for private psychotherapy. Even if you can afford them, you would probably want a “quick fix”.

We wanted to address that problem, and are orientated to provide quality counselling and psychotherapy services in London irrespective of the ability to pay those fees for a substantial length of times.

That’s why we have a sliding fee scale. Our fees for one-to-one therapy start from £20.00 up to £100 per session for once weekly sessions, depending on your income. So, most of our clients pursue medium to long term treatments because they can and they want to.