Salma Siddique

About

Salma Siddique, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, FRAI,AAA, APA  
Contact: [email protected] 

Availability- as primary supervisor (Master’s, DProf & PhD supervisor programmes).

I obtained my doctorate in anthropology from the University of St. Andrews and later qualified as a UKCP registered psychotherapist and clinical supervisor (with a small practice-)  

Existential Philosophy in Coaching, Counselling, and Psychotherapy: Therapy is not about coherence but about engaging with the contradictions of the self. Let us remind ourselves the self is a constellation of stories, resistances, and repetitions. Sometimes, the Real splits the analytic subject, escaping representation. Coaching and psychotherapy do not impose resolution but help clients navigate meaning within radical contingency. Existential philosophy shifts the focus from self-optimization to the nature of being. Kierkegaard’s dizziness of freedom and Heidegger’s Geworfenheit highlight our paradoxical state—both radically free and constrained. Effective therapy embraces this ambiguity, helping clients engage with uncertainty rather than seeking rigid solutions. Psychotherapy is an ideological apparatus that smoothes contradictions instead of revealing them. Neurodiversity further complicates this landscape, including and outside the spaces between classroom and consulting room, as cognitive variability and hybrid social identities challenge standardized therapeutic models, necessitating an approach that values difference over assimilation.

Actual therapeutic work names rather than neutralizes tensions. The political and personal are inseparable; ignoring this in therapy risks complicity in systemic obfuscation. My approach fosters critical engagement rather than passive adjustment. Supervision should be an ethical space for reflexivity, acknowledging the clinician’s subjectivity in the work. It is about technique and questioning power, language, and affect. In teaching, I emphasize interdisciplinary inquiry: How do we witness suffering? What are the limits of intervention? I nurture relational intellectual and ethical curiosity, guiding trainees to embrace uncertainty as essential to their practice. Perhaps understanding is never final; therapy and supervision refine our capacity to ask better questions. The existential challenge is not to find oneself but to engage fully with being lost. My commitment is fostering dialogue and inquiry and upholding the ethic of remaining open to discovery. As a member of the Association for Children, Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH) and the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA) Social Responsibility Committee, I am a clinical anthropologist and contributor to research writing. Editorial Board Member, European Journal for Qualitative Research in Psychotherapy: www.EJQRP.org and regular journal reviewer. My research writing work and clinical practice engage with the tension between collective guilt and personal responsibility examined from the witnessing of identity and belonging through enabling environments for Neurodiverse workforce and learners; those individuals and groups find themselves displaced, gaslighting racism and systemic oppression of difference. 

Facilitating Professional Learning and Research Supervision: Teaching and Research Supervision is an act of engagement and inquiry, where knowledge is co-constructed rather than transmitted. Learning demands presence, relationality, and the courage to think otherwise, echoing Camus’s (1942/1991) insight: “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.” The classroom becomes an ethnographic space where uncertainty is embraced rather than resolved. Fanon (1961/2004) reminds us, “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it, in relative opacity.” Authentic learning resists closure, requiring discomfort and critical interrogation (Freire, 1970). My facilitation of professional learning and research supervision champions epistemological pluralism, rejecting rigid methodologies in favour of intellectual risk. Feyerabend (1975) critiques the dogmatism of the scientific method, advocating for diversity in thought. I encourage students to explore interdisciplinary approaches, fostering inquiry as an evolving, disruptive, and transformative practice.

The digitalization of (re)production knowledge introduces ethical challenges. Varoufakis (2024) warns of technofeudalism, where digital platforms consolidate intellectual and economic control. AI and big data, often perceived as neutral, perpetuate systemic inequities (Noble, 2018). Critical engagement with these technologies is essential to recognizing the biases embedded within them and resisting passive consumption. Learning is an embodied experience—lived, fought, and transformed. Reflection and self-awareness are central to this process (Dewey, 1938). Teaching is an ethical act, not a prescriptive directive but an invitation to question dominant narratives. Taleb’s (2012) notion of antifragility underscores my pedagogical stance: education should not shield students from uncertainty but develop potential skills to navigate complexity. Inquiry thrives on unpredictability, and my role as an educator is cultivating spaces where transformation can occur. Fanon (1952/2008) affirms, “Consciousness needs to get lost in the night of the absolute, the only condition for attaining self-consciousness.” Learning is this necessary darkness—an embrace of uncertainty from which new ways of knowing emerge...

Selected Publications:

• Moutsou, C., & Siddique, S. (2024). Lying and truth-telling on the couch: The sense of touch in the consulting room. In C. Moutsou (Ed.), Dialogues between Psychoanalysis and Architecture: The relational space of the consulting room through the senses (Chapter 3). Routledge Publications

• Siddique, S. (2024). Observing and Consulting in the Digital Aquarium. In C. Moutsou (Ed.), Dialogues between Psychoanalysis and Architecture: The relational space of the consulting room through the senses (Chapter 10). Routledge Publications.
  Siddique, S (2024) A Psychoanalytic Anthropological Exploration of Tracing the Singularity of Things and (Re)membering Fieldwork Nuances - (preparing for publication)

• Siddique, S. and Dominguez, V.R., 2021. Anthropology in the Consulting Room: An Interview with Salma Siddique by Virginia R. Dominguez. American Anthropologist, 123(1), pp.179-183.

• Siddique, S 2019 Chapter 6 Western Configuration: Ways of Being. Martin, K. (ed.). London: Routledge Martin, K. ed., 2019. Psychotherapy, Anthropology and the Work of Culture. Routledge.
• Siddique, S., 2012. Storymaking: In-between anthropological enquiry and Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy. European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 14(3), pp.249-259.
• Siddique, S., 2016. Bhaji on the Beach: Relational Ethics in Practice. Doing Auto-ethnography.
• Siddique, S., 2011. Being in‐between: The relevance of ethnography and auto‐ethnography for psychotherapy research. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 11(4), pp.310-316.