Thirteen new therapists have joined us

Over the past several months, thirteen new therapists have joined us. 

We have been rather late in properly introducing them. Between a busy period at the clinic and the gradual nature of each person joining, the months got ahead of us. Better late than never.

Each therapist brings her own training, experience and way of listening to the clinic. Their arrival has allowed us to offer a wider range of appointment times, languages and clinical experience, while continuing to provide therapy that takes each person and their particular circumstances seriously.

 

Frances McHugh

SMT, MSc, H.Dip., BA, IFPP, ICP
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Frances is an experienced psychoanalytic psychotherapist whose work is concerned with protecting the place of the unconscious and respecting the singularity of each person who comes to speak.

She completed her Higher Diploma, MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Specific Modality Training at the School of Psychotherapy, St Vincent’s University Hospital. She now contributes regularly to its MSc programme.

Before entering clinical practice, Frances worked for many years in senior healthcare management, leading a large staff team and overseeing the delivery of client care. This experience brings an additional understanding of responsibility, institutional life and the pressures that can accompany demanding professional roles.

Frances is an accredited member of the Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and the Irish Council for Psychotherapy.

 

Polina Kostadinova

MSc, APPI, ISLP
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Polina is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist whose work is informed by the Lacanian tradition. She holds an MSc with honours in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from University College Dublin.

Her clinical formation included two years of weekly psychiatry case conferences at St Vincent’s University Hospital. She works with people experiencing anxiety, depression, recurring relationship patterns, questions of identity, sexuality and desire, as well as difficulties that feel harder to name or understand.

Polina’s first publication, which explored subject formation and the logic of the unconscious, appeared in the Irish psychoanalytic journal *Lacunae* in 2025.

She is a member of the Irish School of Lacanian Psychoanalysis and a pre-accredited member of the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland, where she also serves on the events committee. She continues her professional formation through training at the Freud-Lacan Institute in Dublin.

 

Natália Alves

SMT, MA, H.Dip., BA, Cert., ICP, APPI
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist & Couples Therapist

Natália is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with a Freudian-Lacanian orientation. She works with individuals and couples and offers therapy in both English and Portuguese.

Her clinical experience includes work with the HSE National Counselling Service, Trinity College Student Counselling, probation services and addiction programmes. A previous career in the arts also informs her interest in how people find ways to express experiences that may not initially be easy to put into words.

Alongside her individual work, Natália works with couples caught in conflict, emotional distance or patterns that continue to repeat despite their efforts to resolve them. She holds a Professional Certificate in Couples Counselling in addition to her psychoanalytic training.

Natália is a fully accredited member of APPI and the Irish Council for Psychotherapy. She is also a member of the APPI Executive Committee.

 

Diana Gouveia

PhD, MSc, MA, APPI, ICP
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Diana is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist whose practice is grounded in the Freudian-Lacanian tradition. Her work pays particular attention to language, repetition and the unconscious ways in which our experiences come to shape how we relate to ourselves and others.

She holds an MSc in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis from the UCD School of Medicine, as well as a PhD in Anthropology. Her academic work has explored migration, debt, freedom and melancholia, and she contributes to the translation and proofreading of texts for the World Association of Psychoanalysis.

Diana has worked clinically since 2021 and is an accredited member of APPI and the Irish Council for Psychotherapy.

She offers therapy in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

 

Kim Spendlove

MA, MSc, P.Grad.Dip., BA, ISLP, M.Ps.S.I.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Kim is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with extensive experience across clinical and institutional settings. She has worked with people facing a wide range of psychological and relational difficulties, including more complex and enduring forms of distress.

For over ten years, Kim has worked as a training supervisor on the MA programme at Dublin Business School, supporting trainee psychoanalytic psychotherapists in the development of their clinical practice and professional identity. She also lectures at St Vincent’s University Hospital on its Higher Diploma and MSc programmes, with a particular focus on addiction and criminality.

Kim is a graduate member of the Psychological Society of Ireland and a member of the Irish School of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Her writing has also been published in the Irish psychoanalytic journal *The Letter*.

 

 

Sandy Al-Mansour

MSc (Current), LLM, LLB
Trainee Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Sandy is a trainee psychoanalytic psychotherapist who works with adults experiencing anxiety, obsessive or compulsive thoughts and behaviours, depression, burnout, bereavement and relationship difficulties.

Her approach offers people a confidential space in which they can speak freely and at their own pace. Rather than assuming that a difficulty has one simple cause, therapy allows time to explore how past experiences, present circumstances and recurring patterns may be connected.

Alongside her psychotherapy training, Sandy brings more than a decade of experience in analysis, consulting, team leadership and university teaching. She has also delivered workshops on diversity, inclusion and psychological safety within professional settings.

Sandy is a student member of APPI and offers therapy in English and Dutch.

 

Lucy Carr

MSc, P.Grad.Dip., BA, IIPP
Trainee Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Lucy is a senior trainee in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Before beginning her clinical training, she worked in the arts and as a university lecturer specialising in Russian language and literature.

She has also worked extensively in community projects with people whose lives have been shaped by displacement, war, trafficking and social exclusion. This experience informs her interest in the different ways people respond to loss, upheaval and circumstances that can be difficult to fully make sense of.

Lucy holds an MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychoanalytic Studies and a BA in Russian and Classical Civilisation from Trinity College Dublin.

She is a senior trainee with the Irish Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and currently serves on its education committee.

 

Ciara Lacey

SMT, MSc, BA, ICP, APPI
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Ciara holds an MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the UCD School of Medicine and a BA in Psychology from Dublin Business School. She has also completed the post-master’s Specific Modality Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the School of Psychotherapy, St Vincent’s University Hospital.

Her work is informed by the Freudian and Lacanian traditions. She offers a confidential space in which people can speak openly about their experiences, relationships and emotional lives, including concerns that may feel difficult to discuss elsewhere.

Alongside her private practice, Ciara works psychotherapeutically with people who have experienced sexual violence.

She is a member of APPI and the Irish Council for Psychotherapy and continues her clinical formation through supervision, seminars and workshops.

 

Suzanne O’Rourke

SMT, MSc, BSc, BCL, BACP
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Suzanne is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist who has worked clinically since 2016. Her experience includes work at St Catherine’s Counselling Service in Tallaght and in private practice.

She holds an MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and completed two years of post-master’s Specific Modality Training through the UCD School of Medicine and St Vincent’s University Hospital. During her training, she attended weekly psychiatry case conferences alongside the hospital’s clinical team.

Suzanne offers a confidential space in which each person can speak about their own experience without being reduced to a diagnosis or a prescribed account of what their life should mean. She continues her formation through clinical supervision, conferences and psychoanalytic reading groups.

Suzanne is a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the Psychologists Protection Society. She is also a qualified yoga and meditation teacher.

 

Alison O’Byrne

MSc, MA, BA, APPI
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Alison is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with more than fifteen years’ experience across mental health and education in Ireland and South Korea.

She holds a BA in Psychology from Dublin Business School, an MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from University College Dublin and an MA in Applied Psychology and Mental Health from University College Cork.

Alison works with each person in a way that is attentive to the particular form their difficulty has taken, rather than applying the same explanation to everyone. Her practice is supported by weekly clinical supervision, her own analysis and ongoing training at the Freud-Lacan Institute in Dublin.

She is a pre-accredited member of APPI and a member of the Psychologists Protection Society.

 

Anna Murray

MSc, BA, M.Ps.S.I.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Anna works with people experiencing anxiety, depression, difficulties with body image or self-esteem, stress, gambling, eating difficulties, obsessional thinking, relationship problems and experiences of loss.

She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in Psychology and continues her psychoanalytic formation through the School of Psychotherapy at St Vincent’s University Hospital. She has been involved in psychoanalytic study and clinical work for eight years and has also completed the HSE’s ASIST training in suicide first aid.

Anna is a member of the Psychological Society of Ireland and a student member of APPI. She also participates in Espace Analytique Ireland, where she works with practitioners from Ireland, France, Luxembourg and the United States on questions arising from Freudian and Lacanian theory and clinical practice.

Anna offers therapy in English and Polish.

 

Ann-Marie Somerville

MA, BA, M.Ps.S.I., APPI

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Ann-Marie holds a degree in Psychology, a Master’s in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and a Certificate in Therapeutic Play.

Her clinical experience includes work in a family resource centre, private psychotherapy practice, TUD Student Counselling Services, addiction services and a primary school. Before training as a psychotherapist, she spent many years working with adults and children in nursing and social care roles.

This broad experience informs her work with people at different stages of life and with difficulties that may involve family relationships, childhood experience, addiction, emotional distress or periods of significant change.

Ann-Marie is a graduate member of the Psychological Society of Ireland and a pre-accredited member of APPI.

 

Helen Mill

MA, MSc, H.Dip., BA, IAHIP, ICP
Couples Therapist & Psychotherapist

Helen is an accredited humanistic and integrative psychotherapist who works with individuals and couples.

She holds a Master’s in Psychotherapy and a Higher Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy from Dublin Business School, as well as a Master’s in Sociology from the University of Glasgow.

Helen has worked in community counselling, relationship therapy and private practice. Before training as a psychotherapist, she spent almost twenty years working in education, professional training and community settings with individuals and families from a wide range of backgrounds.

Her work is informed by relational, psychodynamic and attachment-based perspectives. In couples therapy, she is interested in the particular language that develops within each relationship, how established ways of relating have evolved and what may become possible when they are listened to differently.

Helen is an accredited member of the Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy and a registered member of the Irish Council for Psychotherapy.

 

 

With the addition of Frances, Polina, Natália, Diana, Kim, Sandy, Lucy, Ciara, Suzanne, Alison, Anna, Ann-Marie and Helen, our clinical team has grown considerably over the past several months.

Although this introduction has been slower in coming than it should have been, we are very glad to finally welcome them publicly to the Other clinic.

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