Dr. John Theis is a clinical psychologist registered in Ontario and a relationship and family therapist approved by the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy. Dr. Theis came to the practice of therapy from quite a diversified background - he was a priest for ten years, a high school science teacher, a high school administrator and a university professor. Over his years as a university professor of Psychology at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, he also had a small private practice in therapy. He took early retirement from the university in 1996 and established a full-time therapeutic practice in Waterloo. He moved to Guelph in 2003 and has been in practice in this office since that time.

Some of the things that characterize the way Dr. Theis considers human issues and how to work with these involve what is called Systems Thinking, which is understanding the world from interactional and relational bases. John Donne, the English poet, said, "No man is an island."  Carl Whitaker, a pioneering family therapist, said, "We think of ourselves as individuals which indeed we are but we come to our individuality by being family fragments." So trying to understand clients by their background, relational experiences is a key to how Dr. Theis works.

There are two domains which have been of great theoretical and practical importance for Dr. Theis. One involves the domain of working with men and understanding the complex issue of male development and how to work with men when that development has been problematic. The second concerns the relationship of fathers and sons - a consideration of core attributes of this relationship and how it develops - and sometimes how it doesn't develop. He has been committed to that pursuit for almost fifteen years and has recently published a book on the topic called Fathers and Sons: The Blessing and the Wound. It is available for interested parties on the internet from both iUniverse and Amazon.ca.