About Roy Sugarman

[ My Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format ]

I followed a perhaps unusual path to clinical psychology and clinical neuropsychology, beginning with university courses in many seemingly unrelated subjects, all of which I seem to have come to use today. Subsequently I entered the hospitality industry as a trainer and manager, another unusual entry to the work I would later do. I managed a Bachelor of Arts degree part time, working till dawn some days, and then an Honours Degree in Applied Psychology full time during the day, working in restaurants by night, another sleepless time in my life! My fulltime Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology was passed with distinction, followed by a doctorate in Clinical Neuropsychology.

In South Africa I spent my time in private practice in both clinical psychology and neuropsychology, helping set up the Afrox Hospital Physical Rehabilitation Centres, now a series of thriving 60 bed units for rehabilitating brain and spinal injury. I spent a lot of time working with various organisations involved in the hospitality industry, keeping staff and executives on track with their personal and professional development.

I qualified myself in the United Kingdom as well, becoming part of the Royal Charter of Psychologists, and being accepted as a Full Practitioner Member of the British Psychological Society's Division of Neuropsychology soon after. All the time spent pottering around in various faculties at Uni paid off in imparting various skills that I would later need!

I came to Australia in 2000, taking up the post of Senior Clinical Neuropsychologist on the Glenside Hospital Campus, part of Royal Adelaide Hospital, and Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Adelaide University. I spent time as a tutor with the South Australian Psychiatry Training Committee, and helped out on the curriculum committee in choosing courses that would meet modern training requirements for psychiatry there. My work on Glenside Campus involved creating programmes that would allow patients whose treatment was stagnating in hospital to leave and be treated in the community, some after many years in closed wards. I served in this capacity on the Management Assessment Panel, now referred to as as an Exceptional Needs group, joining other professionals in finding ways to help patients with complex needs. Having a never-say-die-can-do-mentality paid off, and I published on the subject of working with complex clients in the Australian Health Review. Later on, this would lead me to investigate motivation, ambivalence, and techniques of enhancing motivation in those who struggled to change, and break loose of lifelong patterns of behaviour and belief.

In 2004 I left SA to take up the position of Principal Psychologist for South West Sydney Area Health Service, and Clinical Director of the Clinical Therapies Programme, dealing with complex anxiety and depression in the population there. At the same time I joined the staff at University of New South Wales, as Conjoint Senior Lecturer in the department of Psychiatry.

In 2005 I set up a private practice in Bondi Junction, dealing with general psychotherapy patients as well as the assessment of brain impairment.

I have written book chapters in cross-cultural psychological assessment, and journal articles in social withdrawal and in the evolution of the frontal lobes of the brain.

As an associate editor of the Human Nature Review, and a book reviewer for Metapsychology Online, I get to see the latest in psychological and psychiatric literature, a great way to keep up with international advances in the field, and get books for free too!

At 51, I have turned many corners, many times, and seen thousands of patients doing the same, often with disadvantages of many shades and hues working against them. Despite this, human capacity for endurance and change is inspiring, and something I try to pass along to my many students and clients.

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