Dr Guy Van de Walle — Psychotherapist & Psychologist | Chelmsford & Online (EN/FR)
Contact: 07475 520419 or
The framework which Informs my Work
This page aims to give you a concrete feel of the type of service and experience that I offer to my clients. Please bear in mind that psychotherapy and personal development are complex and non linear processes. Therefore, my purpose here is not to give a full and precise description of what goes on in therapy. Rather, it is to convey some aspects which are important and frequently encountered.
Addressing the limitations of modern Western psychological theories
We are used to celebrating the successes of modern science. However, it is fair to say that existing psychological and psychotherapeutic theories remain relatively coarse and immature. The same can be said of the human sciences more broadly.
This helps explain the wide diversity of theories and approaches, which are often presented side by side—rather unapologetically—to the public. Paradoxically, this diversity is sometimes endorsed and even valorised, as in the notion of “integrative therapy”, despite the tension it entails.
A major and crucial gap concerns the very conception of what a human being is, and how human psychology should be understood. While this may sound surprising, it remains the case that psychologists and psychotherapists continue to debate what we are at a fundamental level, and what is taking place in our psychological life. As a result, the views that are proposed are often mutually incompatible.
There is no real agreement on most aspects of human psychology. This includes the very phenomena that bring people to therapy. To take one example, there is no shared definition of anxiety or depression—what they are, what causes them, or how they should best be addressed.
From a client’s perspective, this matters a great deal. The question is whether the therapist you choose operates on a sufficiently accurate understanding of what you are as a human being, knowing that their work and interventions will largely depend on it.
You may feel that such considerations should not concern you. However, given the current state of the field, they become highly relevant. To use a simple analogy: If you were playing a finely tuned instrument, you would want to place it in the hands of someone who understands how it works and how to care for it.
This leads to a further question: how can you decide which therapist is best suited to accompany you, particularly if your aim is to explore your psychological life in depth?
To answer this, a preliminary question needs to be addressed: what is going wrong in the psychological sciences, and what would a remedy look like?
Sociocentrism and its consequences
A large part of my research has been dedicated to examining this question.
When psychological theories are considered in their historical and cultural context, a central issue becomes apparent: many of them are sociocentric. That is, they reflect the assumptions, values, and self-representations of the societies in which they are produced. In this sense, they are not purely descriptive, but partly ideological.
This is not a marginal issue. It affects the way human beings are conceptualised, and therefore how psychological life is understood.
All societies are sociocentric, and Western societies are no exception. However, this tendency is rarely recognised within the psychological sciences themselves. As a result, many theories present themselves as neutral or scientific descriptions, while in fact being shaped by implicit cultural assumptions.
This contributes to the fragmentation of the field and to the persistence of incompatible frameworks.
Towards a more grounded understanding
Through years of empirical research and clinical experience, I have worked to move beyond these limitations and to develop a more grounded and less biased understanding of human psychology.
This work has led me to identify three fundamental dimensions, and their relationships, as central to understanding psychological life:
• the physical
• the social-cultural
• the personal
These dimensions are introduced below.
The three dimensions of human experience
In practice, the three dimensions of human experience, the physical, the social-cultural and the personal, are never encountered separately. They are always intertwined, and it is through their interaction that psychological life unfolds.
The physical
In contemporary Western societies, the physical dimension of human life is usually understood in purely biological or organic terms.
This view, however, leaves out an important aspect of experience: what can be described as the energetic dimension.
By this, I am not referring to a speculative construct, but to something that is directly observable in experience.
Most people are familiar with this, even if they do not name it as such. There are days when, despite a lack of sleep or food, we feel energised and capable. On other days, even when everything seems in place—rest, nutrition, physical care—we feel depleted, heavy, or slowed down.
This contrast points to a distinction between what is happening at an organic level and what is happening at a more dynamic, experiential level.
This dimension has not always been absent from Western thought. It has gradually been set aside, even though it remains present in other medical and psychological traditions.
Reintroducing it is not a matter of adopting a belief system, but of recognising an aspect of experience that is already familiar and that plays a significant role in how we function.
Why this matters in therapy
Taking the physical dimension into account—both in its organic and experiential aspects—can play an important role in emotional healing and personal development.
The way we feel, think, and relate is not independent of how we are physically situated in ourselves.
For clients who are open to it, I may suggest practices that help reconnect with this dimension as part of a broader process of self-care and development.
This may include, for example:
• attention to how emotions are experienced in the body
• practices such as sophrology (a form of guided or dynamic meditation)
• reflection on movement, posture, and daily physical habits
• consideration of factors such as sleep, nutrition, and activity
These elements are not treated as separate interventions, but as part of an integrated approach to experience.
While this dimension concerns how we are physically situated in ourselves, our experience is also continuously shaped by the social and cultural environment to which we belong.
The social-cultural
From its earliest forms, psychotherapy has tended to understand psychological difficulties primarily in intrapsychic terms—as conflicts within the mind, maladaptive cognitions, or dysregulated affect.
Over time, there has been a shift towards recognising that human experience is also shaped by relationships and culture. In contemporary practice, the social and cultural dimensions are no longer seen as external influences acting upon an otherwise self-contained individual, but as factors that actively shape identity, emotion, meaning, and the formation of symptoms.
Therapists today are generally more attentive to:
• social roles
• early caregiving relationships
• interpersonal contexts
• cultural background
However, despite this progress, psychology and psychotherapy still have a long way to go. Many fundamental aspects of collective psychology remain insufficiently understood. This significantly limits both therapeutic understanding and the range of possible interventions.
Two major blind spots can be identified.
A limited understanding of Western civilisation
To illustrate this, I will focus on one example: the tendency to intellectualise.
In psychotherapy, intellectualisation is typically understood as a psychological defence—a way of managing emotional discomfort by shifting into abstract thinking. Instead of feeling grief, fear, shame, or anger directly, the individual moves into explanation, analysis, or theory.
Different therapeutic approaches describe this in slightly different terms:
• psychodynamic therapy sees it as a defence against anxiety and unconscious conflict
• humanistic approaches view it as a barrier to authentic experiencing
• CBT considers it a form of cognitive avoidance
• trauma therapies interpret it as a nervous system strategy
While these perspectives capture an important aspect of the phenomenon, they overlook something essential: intellectualisation as a cultural trait.
The tendency to intellectualise is not only an individual defence. It is also a cultural characteristic of Western civilisation.
This has been explored, among others, by Eric Alfred Havelock, who traced this tendency back to the development of alphabetic literacy in ancient Greece. This innovation profoundly shaped Western cognition by fostering a form of thinking that separates the self from immediate experience.
As a result, the self developed increasingly as a thinking entity, which contributed to the rise of philosophy and science—but also introduced a form of distance from lived experience.
This has direct implications for therapy.
If intellectualisation is partly cultural, then it cannot be understood solely as a personal defence mechanism. Even when individuals use it to avoid emotional discomfort, they do so within a broader cultural context that already privileges abstract thinking.
Recognising this changes the nature of therapeutic work.
The task is not only to challenge a defensive strategy, but also to support a reconnection with experience—a form of re-education that helps restore a more direct relationship with one’s feelings, perceptions, and bodily experience.
This is a different and more fundamental task.
The interface between dimensions
A second major blind spot concerns the way the social-cultural dimension interacts with the physical and the personal.
Psychological difficulties are often treated as individual issues that may have cultural aspects. However, in many cases, they are more than that: they are expressions of broader cultural patterns, or even features of civilisation itself.
This has important implications.
Although therapy takes place at the level of the individual (or couple), effective work requires an understanding of both:
• personal psychology
• collective psychology at a civilisational level
Historically, psychotherapy has been limited in this respect. The civilisational dimension of psychological life has been largely overlooked.
Addressing this limitation is an important part of my work, both theoretically and in practice.
At the same time, not everything in our psychological life can be reduced to social or cultural influences. There remains a dimension of experience that appears more fundamental and less dependent on context.
The personal
The personal aspect of being human has often been approached in two contrasting ways: through a naturalistic lens (the person as a self-regulating living organism), or through a spiritual one (the person as an incarnated soul).
Regardless of the lens adopted, the distinction between the personal dimension and the other dimensions remains important.
One way to approach the personal dimension is by distinguishing it from what can be attributed to the social-cultural. In practice, this involves a process of subtraction: identifying what, in our experience, is shaped by social and cultural influences, and what appears to belong more fundamentally to ourselves.
What remains is not marginal. On the contrary, it is substantial. It includes, for example:
• the need to love and to be loved
• the need for relationship and belonging
• the importance of freedom
• a sense of justice, of what is fair or unfair
• sensitivity to beauty
• and, at times, the impulse to transcend oneself
These aspects are not simply learned. They are encountered as part of the structure of our experience.
Research in developmental psychology—particularly over the past few decades—has increasingly highlighted the complexity of early human capacities. From the very beginning, human beings display patterns of response and orientation that cannot be reduced to social conditioning alone.
At the same time, while these structures are widely shared, they are not identical in everyone. Each individual expresses them in a particular way. Because of this, we can observe variations in how people relate to the world. For example, some may be more outwardly oriented, while others are more inwardly focused.
How the framework operates in practice
From a practical point of view, it is important to clarify how this framework is used in therapy.
My task is not to teach you these dimensions, nor to ask you to apply them to your experience. The work does not proceed by imposing a model onto what you are living through.
The starting point is always your experience—your thoughts, your feelings, your situations.
It is through the detailed exploration of this material that we begin to clarify what is taking place. In this context, we also reflect together on how best to make sense of your experience, and how best to articulate it—what language allows it to be expressed most accurately.
It is at this stage that elements of my framework may become relevant. They do not appear as predefined explanations, but as possible ways of shedding light on the structure of what is being explored.
In other words, theory is not introduced a priori. It becomes available within the process, as part of an ongoing effort to understand.
At the same time, this does not mean that the work relies on intuition alone. My understanding is continuously informed by a structured and empirically developed framework, which allows me to recognise patterns, clarify meanings, and orient the work in a way that remains grounded and coherent.
The framework is therefore not imposed, but it is always present. It supports the process without constraining it.
This way of working allows for a high degree of freedom. You remain at all times in control of how you understand and express your experience. At the same time, the depth of the investigation tends to challenge familiar ways of thinking, inviting you to question assumptions, expand your perspective, and refine your language.
This process is both demanding and productive. It is also creative and empowering. It contributes to the development of a clearer and more articulated understanding of your experience, and opens new possibilities in how you think, feel, and act.