Donald is a writer, cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist and trainer. He is one of the founding members of the Modern Stoicism nonprofit, and the founder and president of the Plato’s Academy Centre nonprofit in Athens, Greece.
Donald specializes in teaching evidence-based psychological skills, and known as an expert on the relationship between modern evidence-based psychotherapy and classical Greek and Roman philosophy. His work is highly interdisciplinary, combining philosophy, history, and psychology.
He was born in Irvine, Scotland, and grew up in Ayr. He worked as a psychotherapist for about twenty years in London, England, where he had a clinic in Harley Street, and ran a training school for therapists. He emigrated to Canada in 2013 and began focusing more on writing and consultancy. He now divides his time between Greece and Canada.
Donald is an experienced public speaker. His therapy practice specialised for many years in helping clients with social anxiety and self-confidence issues. His work, and that of his colleagues, has often featured in the media of different countries, including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, etc.
Publications
Donald is the author of several books on philosophy, history, psychotherapy, and self-improvement, including How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. See the publications page for more information, and also Donald’s Amazon author page and Google Scholar profile. He is also the author of many articles; see his Medium profile for examples.
Social Media
Donald is active mainly on Twitter and Facebook. He runs a Facebook discussion group for Stoicism, with over 100k members. You can connect with him for work via LinkedIn. He also writes and published a podcast via Substack. Donald also uses Instagram sometimes.
Credentials
Donald was formerly a member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP), and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH). For many years he ran a successful therapy practice in Harley Street, London. He also served on the committees of several national therapy organisations in the UK.
Donald’s academic qualifications are an MA degree in Mental Philosophy from the University of Aberdeen and an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies from the University of Sheffield’s interdisciplinary Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies. His clinical qualifications include an advanced post-graduate diploma in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) from the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing, King’s College, University of London. He also holds a UKCP accredited diploma in psychotherapy, as well as many individual certifications in different therapy approaches.
Speaking
Donald has delivered corporate training on stress management and psychological skills for many different organisations over the years, including Shell, and the US Marine Corp Academy, etc. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and an experienced conference organizer. For many years he taught intensive accredited training courses for therapists and counsellors.
Modern Stoicism
Donald is one of the founding members of Modern Stoicism Ltd., a multi-disciplinary team of psychologists, therapists, and academic philosophers and classicists responsible for running Stoic Week.
Stoic Week started at the University of Exeter and grew into an annual international event in which thousands of people take part each year. It involves an online course teaching students how to apply ideas from ancient Stoic philosophy, combined with some techniques from modern psychology.
