Therapy that works at the level of character, not just symptoms.
Previous therapy helped. You understand the shape of what you carry. The underlying thing did not change. TFP works at the level that generates the difficulties, not the level at which they appear. In-person in Miami, Gold Coast. Telehealth available Australia-wide.
The symptoms are not the problem. They are what the problem produces.
CBT works. That is worth saying clearly. It works particularly well for discrete symptoms sitting on a relatively intact psychological structure: anxiety that arrives in predictable contexts, depression with a recognisable shape. The evidence is large and the skills it offers are real. What it does not address is character.
Character is the term I would use for the deeper level at which someone is organised in relationship: not the specific thought that arrives, but the relational template generating the thought. Not the anxiety, but whatever keeps producing anxiety despite everything that has been learned to manage it. Symptom management can improve. The underlying structure stays in place, because addressing it requires a different kind of work.
Transference-Focused Psychotherapy was developed specifically for this level. It is a structured, evidence-based approach with its roots in object relations theory and over forty years of clinical and research development. Jackson Hill is one of very few practitioners on the Gold Coast offering TFP.
The transference as instrument.
TFP works directly with what happens between therapist and client in real time. I pay close attention to the emotional texture of our interactions: what is being communicated beneath the words, what is being enacted rather than spoken, what feelings arrive in the room and what happens to them. The transference, your experience of me shaped by every significant relational experience that came before, is not a distortion to be corrected or a background feature of the work. It is the primary instrument of change. Working with it directly, session by session, is how something at the level of character actually shifts. This is slower than twelve sessions. The structure that drives character-level difficulty was not formed quickly, and it will not change quickly. What TFP offers is a different kind of shift: at the level of who someone is in relationship, not just how they manage specific situations.
You have done the work. The underlying thing did not change.
TFP is particularly useful for people who have found previous therapy genuinely valuable and insufficient. People who have insight into their relational patterns and cannot move them. Who can trace the shape of a difficulty with precision and find themselves in the same place regardless. Whose understanding has been real and has not been enough.
The approach suits presentations where the difficulty lives in character and relationship: the way someone is with others, the emotional intensity that arrives in close relationships, the tendency to experience people in polarised terms, the sense that the self shifts depending on who is in the room. These are not primarily symptom-level presentations. They are character-level ones, and they require work at that level.
TFP also suits people who have been diagnosed with, or recognise themselves in, personality-level presentations: borderline, narcissistic, and related structures. It was developed specifically for this territory. That said, it is used widely with anyone whose difficulty lives not in discrete episodes but in how they exist, consistently, in their relationships with others.
Jackson Hill
MPsych Clinical · Griffith University 2018AHPRA Registered · Provider No. 5666808K
Trained in TFP · Member, Australian Psychological Society
I am a Clinical Psychologist based in Miami, Gold Coast. I trained in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy and work within a broader relational psychodynamic frame. TFP is my primary approach for character-level presentations. For shorter-term work or presentations where the focus is more on what happens inside rather than between, I draw on ISTDP within the same relational frame.
The approach in any given piece of work is shaped by what the person actually needs. The first session is a genuine diagnostic conversation: what is happening, what has already been tried, and what the work that would actually help looks like.
Questions people usually arrive with.
TFP is a structured, evidence-based psychodynamic approach developed from object relations theory. It works directly with what happens between therapist and client in real time: the emotional texture of sessions, what is communicated beneath the words, and what the client's experience of the therapist reveals about their internal world. It was developed specifically for character-level difficulties and is used widely with anyone whose difficulty lives in how they are in relationships, not just in discrete symptoms. It suits people who have insight into their difficulties without being able to change them, and people who have found previous therapy valuable but not sufficient.
TFP addresses character: the deeper level at which someone is organised in relationship. This includes difficulties with identity and sense of self, emotional intensity in close relationships, the way closeness and distance are managed, and relational dynamics that repeat despite full awareness. It is particularly suited to personality-level presentations, including borderline and narcissistic structures, and to people who find that their relational difficulties follow them regardless of who they are with or what context they are in.
CBT works with thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours. TFP works with character: the relational structure that generates thoughts and behaviours in the first place. Compared to other psychodynamic approaches, TFP is more structured. There is a clear treatment frame established at the outset, and consistent attention to what unfolds between therapist and client session by session. The transference is not a background feature of the work. It is the primary instrument of change.
TFP is typically medium to longer-term work. The structures that drive character-level difficulty were not formed quickly and they do not change quickly. That said, people often notice meaningful shifts in how they experience themselves and their relationships within months. The first session is a genuine conversation about what you are carrying, what has already been tried, and what a meaningful course of work would look like. You should leave it with a clearer sense of what is being proposed and why.
Yes. With a Mental Health Care Plan from your GP, Medicare rebates of $145 apply. Sessions are $225 and your out-of-pocket cost with a valid plan is $80 per session. No referral is required to book; the MHCP is optional but recommended to reduce your cost.
No referral required to book.
A Mental Health Care Plan from your GP reduces your out-of-pocket cost significantly through Medicare rebates, but it is not required to begin.
Per 50-minute session
Out of pocket · $145 Medicare rebate
Sessions in-person in Miami, Gold Coast · Suite 11, 2098 Gold Coast Highway · Telehealth available Australia-wide · Walk-and-talk sessions available locally
Not an intake.
The first session is a genuine conversation: what is happening for you right now, what you are hoping for, and what it would mean for things to be different. Relevant history finds its way in when it needs to. By the end, we will both have a clearer sense of whether this work is the right fit, and what a meaningful course of treatment would look like.
Suite 11, 2098 Gold Coast Highway, Miami QLD 4220
jackson@jacksonhillpsychology.com.au · 0401 065 290
You do not have to arrive with clarity about what is wrong.
Most people do not. A first session is a commitment to one conversation: nothing more.
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