The Accountability Project
A Men’s Therapy Group. Elwood, Melbourne.
Men have been sitting in a circle talking about men’s business for thousands of years.
We are just continuing the tradition.
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Daniel Lichtman ∙ Registered Psychologist, Melbourne
“Why this might be different”
Fifteen years working as an attachment-based couples therapist has given me a rare depth of understanding of relationship dynamics, and heavily informs the way I now help individuals cultivate healthier, more satisfying relationships.
From the outside, your life works. That isn’t the part you came here about.
You’re capable and perhaps accomplished in some areas of life. You have put in the work, professionally and often personally, and much of it has paid off. By any reasonable measure, things are good.
And yet.
There is a gap between the life you have built and the life you actually feel from the inside. Sometimes it shows up as a quiet distance from the people closest to you. Sometimes as a kind of aloneness or existential angst that makes no sense given how many people are around you. Sometimes it is a relationship that has gone flat, or one that has already broken apart. Often it is just the sense of running on autopilot. Successful, but not quite present.
You may have thought about all of this at length. You are the kind of man who thinks a lot, but that has not shifted it.
That is what this group is for.
What It Is
A small, closed group of eight men who meet in person each week in Elwood, led by registered psychologist Daniel Lichtman. It runs as a structured block of ten weekly sessions, long enough to get somewhere real and contained enough to actually commit to.
This is not a support group where men take turns venting, and it is not a lecture or a workshop. It is a carefully facilitated space where men do the real work of understanding themselves, their patterns, their defences and their blind spots, alongside other men doing the same thing. It is also a place where men are encouraged to be curious about and support the growth of the other men in the group.
What makes a group different from working it through on your own is that the patterns do not stay theoretical. They show up live, in the room, in how the men relate to each other, which means they can be noticed, named and worked with as they happen.
For those who want to keep going, there is the option to continue into a second block, sessions eleven to twenty. The first block is where the work starts. The second is where it deepens. What tends to develop over a longer arc is harder to describe and impossible to manufacture: a small group of men who know each other well, challenge each other honestly, and stand with each other through the wins and the losses. That is not the reason to join. It is what often grows when men keep showing up for each other.
What Brings Men Here
Men come to The Accountability Project for different reasons. Some are going through separation or divorce and want to understand what happened and what comes next. Some men understand the value of having a supporting group of men to meet regularly and hold each other accountable. Some are in long term relationships that have gone quiet or turned difficult. Some carry a sense of aloneness or existential angst that does not match their outward life. And some simply recognise that the same patterns keep repeating across their relationships and their work, and they are ready to do something about it.
What they tend to share is this. They are reflective, they are willing to be challenged as well as supported, and they are tired of insight that never quite turns into change.
Why a Group Rather Than Individual Therapy
Individual therapy is valuable, and for many men it is the right starting point. A group offers something different. Here, the parts of you that stay hidden one to one have somewhere to show up. The defences that work everywhere else, the humour, the competence, the self reliance, become visible in a setting where they can be looked at directly. And honest reflection from other men, who have no particular reason to flatter you, is something most men get very little of in adult life.
About The Facilitator
Daniel Lichtman is a registered psychologist based in Elwood who works with high performers on relationships, emotional patterns and personal growth. His approach to facilitation is warm and direct, and men in the group can expect to feel both genuinely supported and, at times, genuinely challenged. His work draws on Schema Therapy, EMDR, ACT, Gestalt Group therapy training and attachment based approaches. He has been regularly facilitating men’s groups since 2004.
The Details
Format: Closed group, 8 participants
Location: In person, Elwood, Melbourne
Duration: 10 weekly sessions, 90 minutes each, with the option to continue into a second block
Medicare rebates available for eligible participants with a Mental Health Care Plan