THE MEN'S CENTRE - LONDON [est. 1985]
Counselling and Psychotherapy for
angry/abusive or violent men and
for men and women with emotional,
relationship and sexual problems.
Telephone 0207-267-8713
West hill House. 6 Swains Lane. London N6.6QS
Welcome to The Men's Centre. Established in 1985, the Centre was the first dedicated, professionally staffed, treatment centre in Europe for men who are abusive to those they love and which placed the safety of women and children at the centre of its practice without sacrificing our concern for men's long term mental and emotional health.
We have published regularly about our work and its theoretical and clinical foundations since our first article in the journal ' Free Associations' in 1989.
In the twenty three years since we began we have worked with thousands of men. We have also helped others to set up and conduct intervention programmes with supervision from Centre staff. We have trained programme conductors across Europe and been employed as consultants by Local Authorities and Probation services wishing to establish intervention programmes. Our follow up research shows that our work is as successful as any. We have conducted and published research into the origins of abuse and the effective treatment of abusive and violent men. We are members of Respect, the national co-ordinating body for programmes for abusive men and subscribe to their principles. We work with parallel support workers for women who are either employed by authorities we work with or who work directly with the Centre. All workers are professionally trained and are members of appropriate professional bodies.
Our work with abusers is founded on an integration of orthodox psychodynamic theory and a feminist understanding of the gender politics of male abuse of women and children. Politically, we believe that men's abusiveness is representative of the worldwide reality of men's dominance of women and the expectation of submissiveness and obedience.
We believe the psychological roots of men's violence to women and other forms of abuse are to be found in the ways boys and girls are taught gender role expectations of males and females and the asymmetry in male and female psychological development.
We currently conduct programmes commissioned by Local Authorities as well as programmes for men who self-refer. Male residents of Camden are provided with free assessment and group treatment. Men who self-refer are required to pay for attendance on a programme or for individual treatment. At the moment assessment for treatment costs between £90 and £150. Attendance on a once weekly group programme costs £170 per month for self referrals. The charges change from time to time and can be discussed if you telephone. We try to charge at a level that most can afford. If you wish to discuss attendance on a programme please phone 0207-267-8713.
Minimum attendance on a groupwork programme is 36 weeks, which does not include holiday breaks. Although we believe this is sufficient to enable most men to achieve self-control in relation to their abusive and violent behaviour, it would be misleading to claim that this is sufficient time to achieve the changes in the internal emotional world required for real peace of mind. In fact, many men decide to continue their treatment, either in groups or individual analytic treatment, after they complete the anti-abuse programme, to pursue more general therapeutic goals.
As an analytic psychotherapy centre we also offer treatment for most kinds of personal problems apart from violence and abuse. We work with men and women either individually or in couples and we design treatment programmes for each depending on the nature of the problems. The charges depend on a number of factors but as a guide you can expect to pay between £80 - £150 per session for individual or couples therapy and between £115- £180 per month for weekly group therapy.