The Therapist
Spencer Overgaard
Spencer has been in the helping professions for 30 years, 18+ of which have been practicing psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is his full-time passion. He is well-qualified with a hard-earned psychotherapy diploma from the Centre for Training in Psychotherapy in Toronto (ctp.net), as well as two master degrees in disciplines concerning the learning and the human condition. He is committed to on-going professional education. He is a member in good standing of two professional associations and has been both a board and committee member.
Professionally he was a faculty member of Centennial College for 15 years where he counselled students on personal issues and taught Psychology. In his practice, Spencer deals with the wide range of issues that arise from everyday life including - but not limited to - depression, anxiety and relationships. He works primarily with individuals but has trained to work with couples and will see them upon request.
Biography:
Spencer was born in Edmonton, Alberta to Danish immigrants who arrived in Canada following the Second World War. He was raised in Toronto. As a youngster interest in football lead him to a job as an equipment boy with the Toronto Argonauts at the tender age of eleven. Seeing professional football’s larger-than-life personalities in athletes, coaches, managers, owners and media personalities introduced him to the extraordinarily wide range of human hubris and humility and planted the seeds for later explorations of the psyche.
Spencer did his undergraduate work as a Canadian Studies major at Carleton University (B.A.), class of 1979. He completed a master of divinity (theology) degree (M. Div.) in 1983 at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon including a one year internship in Thunder Bay, Ontario. In addition, he received a clinical counselling certificate from the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, B.C. At university he played intervarsity basketball for the Carleton Ravens and the University of Saskatchewan Huskies, but rarely made it off the bench. Nevertheless, at Carleton he did win the Doug Bantam Memorial Award for sportsmanship, an honour bestowed by his teammates.
While studying theology he became aware of the simple and yet transforming power of one-to-one dialogue for the purposes of resolving individual personal troubles. This added to the the impetus for initiating psychotherapy studies in Toronto.
It was in the Sand Hills of South-West Saskatchewan - cowboy country – where Spencer got his first real job came in 1983. He worked as a community worker there and later in suburban Toronto (Malvern). For a number of years before shifting into psychotherapy, he taught life skills for the Toronto Board of Education at homeless shelters and addiction clinics in downtown Toronto. Later he counseled at Kid’s Help Phone and taught English and ESL as a sessional instructor at George Brown and Humber College. In 1997 he joined the faculty of Centennial College where he taught psychology and counseled students till December 2012.
Spencer received his Diploma in Psychotherapy (Dip CTP) in 2000 from the Centre for Training in Psychotherapy, after eight years of academic, personal, and clinical preparation (see www.ctp.net). He is a clinical member of the Ontario Society of Psychotherapists (OSP), where he was a board and committee member for 4 years. He is a member in good standing with the Canadian Association for Psychodynamic Therapy (CAPT) and the CTP Alumni Association. He continues his education with post-graduate courses at the CTP among other offerings and gets clinical supervision through faculty and peers. He has been practicing since 1997.
Among the authors he’s found inspiring and useful are Winnicott, Bollas, M.F. Basch, Jung, Freud, Hans W. Loewald, Jonathon Lear, and recently, Thomas Ogden & Philip Bromberg.
Downloads
Qualifications (PDF): A complete list of qualifications and education
Pyschotherapy Training (PDF): Minimum requirements for the C.T.P. Diploma
Code of Ethics (PDF): Code of Ethics for the Canadian Association for Psychodynamic Therapy