Habitual ways of being with our loved ones and others can be attempts at self-cure from the pain of emotional injuries that are out of our awareness. Psychoanalysis, like a clearing in the middle of a dense wood, is a quiet space to listen to yourself in the safe company of another, closely listening to you, to discover the links between past experience and your current ways of being. By entering the psychoanalytic process together, along verbal and non-verbal pathways, we gradually link the filtering lens of unconscious motivations and expectations to how you see yourself and your choices; how you live in your body; and how you perceive and interact with others, including your analyst. Tending to the bonds which are created during therapy creates a safe place for self-revelation and emotional contact. In the course of psychoanalysis, we will find ways for you to feel safer in making connections between parts of your inner personal world and your being in the external world. Such connections stimulate the mind to work in new ways which helps you become freer in thinking for yourself.

Everyone has a problem to solve; it may seem specific—being out of control, trouble with food or drink or sex; being inhibited in completing a piece of creative work; the pain of a loss that you can’t let go of; a torturing thought; recurring conflict with a family member. Conflicts in personal relationships often overlap with creative blocks. Or the problem may be more mysterious: a heaviness of heart, a blank mind, a yearning for romantic love, an unbearable despair that life is passing you by. It took many years to arrive at this roadblock. It stands to reason that working out your own unique way through it takes time as you evolve a new relationship with your inner world, mind and body, and with others.

Psychoanalysis is an open-ended therapy; it will make clear to you the frequency of sessions each week it needs and what is adequate time for the journey. It is a process in which two people work hard together to understand the inner life of one of them by means of the unique relationship they create. You might think of it as a particular kind of know-how, a knowing how to know yourself, to make your own and when you are ready to go it alone, to take along with you into the world.