Joe Kelly

Training and Accreditation

Joe holds a Master’s degree in Psychotherapy and a Higher Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy from Dublin Business School; a Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh; and a Post Graduate Certificate in Psychoanalytic Studies from the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London. He is an accredited member of IAHIP (Irish Association of Humanistic & Integrative Psychotherapy).

Approach and Experience

Joe is a relational psychodynamic psychotherapist, offering a thoughtful, containing and reflective space in which clients can explore their emotional lives at a pace that feels safe and manageable. His work is grounded in contemporary psychodynamic thinking, attachment theory and an understanding of trauma, with particular attention to unconscious patterns, early relational experiences and the therapeutic relationship.

Joe is also trained as a humanistic, integrative therapist and draws on different approaches according to the needs of each client. His aim is to support greater self-understanding, emotional integration and the loosening of patterns that may no longer serve the client.

Joe has three years’ experience with Mind and Body Works, alongside previous work facilitating mental health peer-support groups at St Patrick’s Hospital, as a parish counsellor in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and as a peer counsellor at Trinity College Dublin. He has worked in Ireland and internationally with adults, young adults and adolescents, individually and in groups, across private practice, schools, universities and outpatient settings.

He has experience working with anxiety, depression, trauma, bereavement, relationship difficulties, self-esteem, identity, workplace difficulties, burnout, family conflict, loneliness, life crises and personal development. He has particular interests in the psychological experience of parenthood, achievement and image culture, and their impact on identity, relationships and wellbeing.