Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Central London

Psychotherapy may be able to help you if you are experiencing recurrent psychological problems such as anxiety or compulsive behaviour affecting the quality of your life or spoiling your relationships.

Most psychological problems arise from our defences against buried feelings re-entering our conscious experience. Think of the psyche as a play where the cast appears on stage in the guise of shadows and its development moves towards a resolution when the figures who cast the shadows are revealed and take their place under the lights.

I have a particular interest in finding meaning in such difficult defensive states of mind as boredom and lack of vitality. What I am thinking of by using the word 'meaning' is the possibility of a person discovering his or her vested interest in maintaining a particularly unproductive state of mind, only here 'understanding' is much more than an intellectual appreciation of the operative defensive system. Rather is it a matter of standing-under this knowledge of ourselves in a way that allows for a choice to relinquish, or at least loosen, the power of the defensive pattern.

The complex puzzle of perverse behaviour poses a challenge to the psychoanalytic endeavour - for both parties - as embodying a fiercely defensive force field. The task of the therapy would be to seek a way of re-evaluating the compulsive patterns and to explore the possibility that so-called sexual dysfunction may be only a symptom of deep fears, and recalcitrant defences against those fears, buried in the broader structure of a person's character. Again it would be a matter of seeing their rigidity in operation in the session, and of assessing the cost of relinquishing them when other options for self expression are glimpsed.

Working psychoanalytically entails paying particular attention to the interchange (the instant feeling field) constantly taking place between therapist and patient rather than the discussion of ideas, giving of advice or ascribing labels. This affords a setting in which these defensive patterns are not just referred to, but may be seen functioning for what they are, namely to obstruct our potential capacity to face reality, and in that setting we may in time be able to reach a more comfortable accomodation between what feels good and what bad in our inner world.

In this way a person may gain new insight into how their choices were being determined, and may thus experience a freedom to make different ones.

If you are considering exploring the possibility of having therapy and would like an initial interview to be able to assess whether it would be appropriate for you, CLICK HERE for my contact details.