Dr Marie-Thérèse Proctor

Dr Marie-Thérèse Proctor is full-time Head of Excelsia College’s Graduate School of Counselling and Director of the Excelsia College Counselling Centre. She is a psychologist and psychotherapist in part-time private practice, an academic and educator since the mid 90’s, holding three degrees in psychology and one in psychotherapy. She has held adjunct research appointments with Griffith University, Central Queensland University and Australian College of Ministries, has been a member scholar with the International Institute of Qualitative Methodology (IIQM) and Research Fellow in the School of Psychology, University of Western Sydney, where she was also a member of the Psychology and Spirituality Society. In 2017 she was appointed as Senior Research Fellow of the Lumen Research Institute, Excelsia College and Indiana Wesleyan University. She has served on external and internal academic boards and in 2016 was invited to be a Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA) course accreditation panel member and chairperson and in 2017 a member of the PACFA Education Program Accreditation Committee (EPAC) Board. She is research active, having authored and co-authored book chapters and peer-reviewed articles in her areas of interest, including spirituality, health and trauma; spiritual attachment and psycho-social adjustments to illness, also providing research supervision to counselling and psychology Masters and PhD students. Her clinical interests include the development of self, resolution of chronic complex trauma, grief and loss; psycho-spiritual health, wellbeing and maturation; providing long-term psychotherapy for adults experiencing difficulties in these areas. She also has a longstanding interest in adjustment in the face of serious life challenges, for example, having also worked as a psychologist-researcher for the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, where she engaged with families caring for ill and dying children and adolescents. She has over 25 years experience raising children with multiple pervasive developmental disabilities, medical and other health related conditions. She is a practicing Christian, raised in the Catholic tradition.