My Practice

There are many therapies that aim to alleviate our mental suffering. Some of these provide considerable relief to patients. However, ever since quick-fix solutions have become so dominant, a revolving-door phenomenon has emerged. This can mean that a particular treatment or psychological intervention seems to work for a time, and then a person's symptoms either return or new symptoms appear in their place.

Psychoanalysis works toward more long-term, sustained solutions. Unlike many of the experiences we have today, where the focus is only on the results, the richly illuminating process of psychoanalysis is what is important. It can be the key to shifting what may be defeating or disappointing us.

My practice provides a protected, confidential  space where you can speak without self-censorship about your inner-life as well as the challenges you face from day to day. Psychoanalysis is founded on the idea that there is a division (a gap) between our conscious awareness and the unconscious thoughts that may drive our behaviour, shape our desires, and structure our imagination. Unconscious motivations surface in dreams and in actions that go wrong or seem inexplicable.

Sometimes, the unconscious surprises us by the associations and links we make when speaking freely and also in the way language trips us up at certain times.

My practice is based on careful listening. This means being attuned to what is revealed but at the same time concealed in the words we use to communicate our memories, our suffering, frustration, hopes or despair. I have been trained with a Lacanian orientation. (For more examples of a Lacanian approach to psychoanalysis, see the link at the bottom of this page). In the first sessions we will work together to see what could be the most appropriate direction for your treatment (psychoanalysis or psychotherapy). Regardless of the name of a particular approach, my work follows certain principles. It is not prescriptive or based on any pre-determined judgements or conclusions. Patients are treated as wholly distinct, singular individuals with unique histories and experiences,   not as a set of symptoms to be fined into a box or template. It is not a deficit model. According to Lacan, symptoms such as anxiety, obsessions, eating disorders or panic, for example, contain a truth about a person's history and moreover, can be an attempt on their part (one often involving considerable effort), to find a solution to  something intolerable their lives.

To paraphrase the Lacanian psychoanalyst and author Darian Leader:

We need to return to an earlier, more humane, approach; one which attends to the particularity of each case, and which offers the person the chance to assume - however slowly, however painfully - what can be assumed of their history, and to find a way to live with what can't.

(For more information on the writings of Lacanian psychoanalyst Darian Leader see http://www.darianleader.com/)