Professor Ernesto Spinelli is a practising existential psychotherapist and the Academic Dean of the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling at Regent’s College, London which is the principal centre for the analysis and development of existential-phenomenological thought and practice as applied to the related fields of psychotherapy, counselling and counselling psychology. Professor Spinelli is Past Chair of the Society for Existential Analysis and of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Counselling Psychology. He is a registered existential psychotherapist, and accredited counsellor and a Chartered Counselling Psychologist.

He has gained an international reputation for his exposition of various key issues in existential-phenomenological inquiry, most notable with regard to the question of the development of the self-construct, the relational realms within the psychotherapeutic relationship and the inter-subjective factors which inform an existential theory of human sexuality. For these, and other, original contributions, Professor Spinelli was awarded a Personal Chair in Psychotherapy Counselling and Counselling Psychology in 1998.

Among his many papers and publications, Professor Spinelli’s The Interpreted World: an introduction to phenomenological psychology (Sage, 1989); Demystifying Therapy (Constable, 1994) and Tales of Un-knowing: therapeutic encounters from an existential perspective (Duckworth (UK) and New York University Press (US)) have been widely admired for their clarity and originality of argument.