Alfred Gull (German Board Certified)

Dubai Clinical and Healthcare Psychologist

Alfred Gull is a German Clinical and Healthcare Psychologist who was trained at one of Germanys most reputable Universities in Goettingen. With over 28yrs professional experience, he is one of Dubai’s most experienced Psychologists. To compliment his broad area of expertise in psychology, Alfred obtained an additional master’s degree in Applied Social Science and an additional Master’s in Sports Science in Germany. During his outstanding career, Alfred worked in multiple settings with all sorts of psychological issues.

Having grown up in a multicultural and multilingual context, Alfred gained invaluable personal experience as a result of this multicultural contact. As a result of this, he is an expert in dealing with all the different challenges his clients face during their transition process, and the high adaptation of psychological health needed to form a new community, culture, and environment. Alfred supports and helps his clients to improve their approach to their thoughts and feelings and guides them towards new ways of coping with and reducing distress.

Areas of Expertise

• Adjustment issues in difficult life situations
• Excessive and uncontrollable worrying, generalized anxiety and panic-disorders
• Perfectionism, obsessive-compulsive disorders
• Low self-esteem, depression, bipolar disorders
• Grief and loss of loved ones
• Anger-management
• Posttraumatic stress disorders
• Burn-out
• Addictions
• Personality disorders with an emphasis on borderline personality disorders
• Autism spectrum disorder
• Schizophrenia

• (Pregnant) women with depression or personality disorders

(Group-) therapy for children, adolescents and adults with

• Adjustment disorders
• Eating disorders, obesity, and metabolic disorders
• Couple counseling

Alfred is highly experienced in providing

• Supervision and staff training for the therapeutic personnel of clinics and for nurses, teachers, and other civil servants, as well as employees of all kind of companies

In addition, after his academic studies, Alfred underwent three years of postgraduate training in a range of specialized therapeutic techniques and therapies, containing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to become a Clinical and Healthcare Psychologist. Being trained and experienced in therapies (e. g. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, RET, IPT, Schema Therapy, Mindfulness, EMDR, and Narrative Exposure Therapy), Alfred prefers an eclectic approach, which combines therapeutic interventions caused by his client’s problems and needs. His client, who is an expert on his issues and disturbances, is determining the well-defined objects of the then provided evidence-based strategies and psychotherapeutic interventions to gain stability in the client’s daily life. Therefore, he can draw from a range of therapeutic models to compile a specific and successful treatment for the individual.

According to his approach, specific and detailed diagnostics is inevitable for promising and successful psychotherapy to understand the development and the maintenance of the client’s unique issue. This is why using psychometric tests and interviews are essential factors in his work. Alfred has comprehensive methodological knowledge. He is experienced in personality tests (e. g. MMPI), in particular, projective techniques (e. g. Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Test), neuro-psychological and intelligence tests (e. g., Raven’s Progressive Matrices, DCS, D2), as well as specializing in tests focusing on particular psychological issues. His approach is based on the most recent scientific methodologies and always of utmost transparency for the client.

From January 1992 to December 1994, Alfred was the therapeutic head in a sheltered workshop for 420 mentally and physically disabled children, adolescents, and adults where he treated clients with panic- and generalized anxiety disorders, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, burn-out, depression, personality disorders, and schizophrenia. Besides, he was the head of the therapists of the sports therapy department.

After 1995 he was appointed the therapeutic head of two different wards. He treated patients from all over the world (e. g. expats, migrants, and refugees with postraumatic stress disorders) with life-crises occurring after leaving their home country and being confronted with a new social environment and culture. He provided psychotherapy in English, German, and Romanian. In this field, he then applied cognitive-behavioral strategies (CBT), elements of the Schema Therapy according to Young, the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), according to Linehan, Narrative Exposure Therapy, Group Therapy, as well as imagination and relaxation methods. This helped his patients to optimize functioning again among their family members, friends, and co-workers in the new environment on a daily basis.

Subsequently, Alfred enriched his clinical experience within the following 24 years. He treated clients with panic and generalized anxiety disorders, which is defined as excessive and uncontrollable worrying, bipolar disorders, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, somatoform disorders, posttraumatic stress disorders, addictions, schizophrenia, and personality disorders with an emphasis on borderline personality disorders. During his psychological work as a therapeutic head of a multi-functional ward at a Lower Saxon Psychiatric Clinic in Goettingen, Alfred specialized in therapy with patients with autism spectrum disorder, (pregnant) women with depression or personality disorders, and children or adolescents with eating disorders. As a Clinical and Healthcare Psychologist and Sports Scientist, Alfred is offering as well group therapy for children, adolescents, and adults with adjustment disorders, obesity, and metabolic disorders. Therefore he is highly experienced with people of all ages.

Also, he regularly has worked in permanent cooperation with the German Lower Saxon Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. The transferred patients were nurses, teachers, and other civil servants, with depression, burn-out syndrome, perfectionism, anger, obsessive-compulsive disorders, addictions, need for couple counseling, and adjustment disorders in difficult life situations.

Finally, Alfred regularly worked as lecturer and supervisor for the therapeutic personnel of the psychiatric clinic he worked for, and for the employees of different residential homes, and he provided staff training. His scientific focus in various studies is on “The Efficacy of Feedback in Goal-Oriented Teams” a review evaluated with System for the Multiple Level Observation of Groups (SYMLOG) invented by Robert F. Bales, Harvard University / translated into German by himself), and “The Effectiveness of Group Psychotherapy on patients with Schizophrenia.”