David Eldred is a federally certified psychotherapist and member of the Swiss Professional Association for Applied Psychology. He has focused his professional experience on trauma, substance use, eating disorders, depressive mood and anxiety disorders while treating patients from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and other countries around the world.
He is also qualified in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), traumatology and trauma therapy, mindfulness and mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy. His original studies and training focused on the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung.
Since 2004, Dr. Eldred has served as a member of the medical team in various medical centers and medical practices in Zurich. In 2013, he extended his focus to include consulting as a psychotherapist at Paracelsus Recovery and, two years later, The Kusnacht Practice both of which are UHNW rehabilitation and psychiatry clinics in Zurich, Switzerland. Here he treated well over one hundred UHNW individuals. In January 2022, Dr. Eldred returned to private practice where he now works three days a week.
In 1981, David Eldred and his co-founder Dr. Ellen Celi founded an independent research project studying the psychological processes in children with cancer. They are considered to have done pioneering work establishing the first psychotherapeutic services for these children and adolescents in Switzerland. In cooperation with The University of Zurich Children’s Hospital, he provided treatment to children and their families from 1982 to 1995. At the Pestalozzi Children’s Village in Switzerland in 1990, Dr. Eldred helped set up the first psychotherapeutic services in Switzerland for children and adolescent orphans from war-torn nations of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. His expertise with children and adolescents over the past 38 years led to the founding of The Kusnacht Practice’s Youth Program in 2021. During the 1990’s, his professional efforts shifted their focus onto the treatment of adults.
He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Education in the USA. Dr. Eldred then came to Zurich in 1975 to psychology under Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz (a colleague of Prof. Dr. Carl Gustav Jung from 1934 – 1961). He studied at the University of Zurich and completed his PhD in analytical psychology at Union Graduate School in Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1979 to 1981 he completed his doctoral research at State Hospital of Lucerne where he worked with terminally ill cancer patients under the direction of Prof. Dr. med. Frank Nager, director of the Department of Medicine. His dissertation, The Psychodynamics of the Dying Process“ was cited for its excellence by Dr. von Franz in her book, On Dreams and Death“ (1986).
David Eldred is the author/co-author and editor/translator of several specialist text book publications and has given lectures at The University Children’s Hospital Zurich, The St. Urban Psychiatric Clinic of the Canton of Lucerne, The Swiss Cancer League in Bern, the German Medica Congress in Düsseldorf, and Forum Managed Care in Zurich to name a few.
He has been married for twenty years, is the father of two stepsons 21 and 28 years old, and lives in Zurich, Switzerland. His hobbies include writing poetry, lyrics and, presently, a book on the theme of “Good and Evil,” as well as carpentry, gardening, meditation, and pursuing good health.
