Her book Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy in Practice, first published in 1987, became a bestseller and saw its second edition in 2002 and a third edition in 2012. She was also instrumental in founding the World Confederation for Existential Therapy and the Federation for Existential Therapy in Europe, both at the first World Congress for Existential Therapy, which she organized with her husband Prof. She remains an Honorary Life Member of SEA. She has written extensively on the application of philosophical ideas to working with individuals, couples, groups and organizations and she founded the Society for Existential Analysis and its Journal Existential Analysis in 1988. She was a visiting fellow with Darwin College, Cambridge. She has also been a professor with Schiller University and with Regent’s College. She used to be Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Conflict and Reconciliation at the University of Sheffield and an Honorary Professor with the University of Sheffield. NSPC also runs a foundation course, short courses and various other opportunities for training (see Emmy is a visiting Professor with Middlesex University. It is now based at the Existential Academy on Fortune Green Road, West Hampstead.Įmmy continues to direct the New School which now offers five masters and two doctoral programmes with Middlesex University, one in Existential Counselling Psychology and one in Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling.
Digby Tantam took over the management of NSPC. The school was originally based on the South Bank, in Waterloo, but moved to West Hampstead in 2010, when she and her husband, Prof. Emmy left Regent’s College in 1996 to found the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, which specializes in post-graduate existential psychotherapy, counselling psychology, coaching and pastoral care training. She became Dean of the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, which she founded in 1991 and she expanded this to a large and successful training organization, obtaining validation from City University.
The course moved to Regent’s College in 1985 and merged with the College in 1989, when she was appointed as Head of the Regent’s Psychology Department. She developed the MA in the Psychology of Therapy and Counselling of which she became Director in 1982. After a work/study trip to California, she began teaching on the London programmes of Antioch University International and became Associate Director of their MA in Humanistic Psychology. She came to the UK in 1977 to live and work in a psychotherapeutic community of the Arbours Association, in London, where she also worked in the Crisis Centre and taught on the psychotherapy training programme. She completed a Masters Degree in phenomenology and existentialism, with famous philosopher Michel Henry and worked for several years in the revolutionary psychiatric hospital of Saint Alban in the Massif Central as a group facilitator and counsellor.Īfter this she worked in the psychotherapeutic centre ‘La Candelie’ in Agen, South West France, where she also trained in psychotherapy, supervised by well known psychoanalyst Francois Tosquelles, whilst completing a Masters Degree in clinical psychology at the University of Bordeaux. After a classical education she moved to Montpellier, France, where she studied French and Philosophy. Emmy was born on 13 December 1951 in The Hague, Netherlands.