Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
You may already have considerable insight: you know the history, recognize the triggers, and understand what you ought to do differently. The question is why insight hasn't been enough.
What happens in session
You can start with the reason you booked, or with something that at first glance seems trivial: a dream, an event from childhood, an annoyance that’s been stuck in your head since last week. You might also start by not knowing where to start.
In session, I listen to the way you speak as well as to the story being told. I may ask about a word you used, return to something said earlier, or stop on a contradiction or change of direction. Sometimes I give more space. The point is not to produce the most complete or sensible account of yourself. Sometimes the thing that sounds like a digression is closer to the thing.
The same thing, again...
It can be maddening to recognize a habit you're trying to stop while still doing it.
Psychoanalysis doesn't treat this simply as a failure to learn or try hard enough. We pay attention to what repeats and to what stays oddly consistent even as circumstances change. A symptom can be unwanted and costly while still having a particular place in a person's life. The work is to find out what that place is, rather than deciding in advance what it means or what should replace it.
What is the aim?
Psychoanalysis doesn't begin with a predetermined idea of what you should do or what kind of person you should be. Over time, you may find that something in your relation to what brought you to analysis changes. You may find a symptom to lose some of its force, a distressing experience may no longer unfold in the same way, something that seemed to leave you with no choice may become possible to respond to differently. What that change looks like is particular to the person.
Clinical background
My work is influenced by Freud and Lacan, particularly Lacan's later teaching. In following with this perspective, not every difficulty can be translated into a final explanation, and treatment needn't move someone toward a standard idea of "normality". There is rather a focus on the singular way the experience has come to take its place in a life.
My psychoanalytic work develops through ongoing study and participation in clinical and academic communities in the field. I’m a member of Lacan Toronto and a Friend of the Ottawa Psychoanalytic Society.
Book a free 10-minute phone consultation to begin.