Dr. Emma Svanberg

Dr. Emma Svanberg has worked with parents and families for over 20 years, and qualified as a Clinical Psychologist in 2009. Dr. Svanberg is also known as the ‘Mumologist’, because her work is predominantly with mums and mums-to-be (although she does work with dads and partners too!)

She has worked in a number of different mental health settings but specialises in the perinatal period – the time around pregnancy, birth and the early years of parenthood, with a particular interest in attachment, trauma and the intergenerational roots of our problems.

She trained at UCL, London and has done further training with organisations such as the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, the Anna Freud Centre and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Her interest in perinatal psychology has led me to places as near as Tower Hamlets and as far as Calcutta.

She’s been interested in working with parents since her teenage years, when she met the developmental psychopathologist Dr Patricia Crittenden at her kitchen table. Her dad, P.O. Svanberg, pioneered an early intervention programme to promote secure attachment relationships, and the conversations she had with him and his colleagues over this time sparked a lifelong awareness of why parents matter so very much and our need to support this intense and important time.