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FAQ Section

Q: How long does therapy last?
A: As long as it takes, and as long as you have drive to return and reflect on pressing and important questions about (a) how you work and (b) how you love.

Q: I’ve heard that therapy can take a long time, is this always the case?
A: A therapy may last as long as you want to do the work, and you may see benefits while the therapy develops. The progress is not linear, and there might be times when it feels the work is difficult or even exacerbates some symptoms. The journey is different for each one of us.

Q: Is psychoanalytic therapy evidence-based?
A: Yes. Although it’s harder to measure long-term and open-ended therapy using RCTs, there is growing evidence for its effectiveness - informed by decades of clinical practice, meta-reviews, and dialogue with other disciplines such as neuropsychology and social psychology.

Q: Does psychoanalytic therapy focus only on childhood trauma?
A: It can focus as much on the past as it does on the present, regardless of any trauma. Many people report gradual, non-linear progress and benefits that are unexpected, while the therapy develops.

Q: Will I learn coping strategies, or gain additional tools?
A: Perhaps – coping strategies may emerge naturally, but the work focuses on setting the kind of questions that make lasting change possible.

Q: If I understand the root cause of my problem, will it then be resolved?
A: Insight and knowledge alone does not drive change. Although a fresh insight about an old problem might feel revolutionary, new thoughts about old patterns do not in themselves become whole new patterns. If you are trying to say the proper things and contain your whole life experience in a box, then you run the risk of intellectualising your difficulties. There needs to be a “working through”, where new perspectives and stances are tested out – and therapy offers a space where new paths forward can be “tested out” until something “sticks”.

Q: What is the unconscious, and why is it important?
A: The unconscious refers to aspects of ourselves we are not fully aware of: desires, beliefs, values, or conflicts that may shape our actions. It is an abstraction that may help account for why we suffer the way we do. It might be helpful to be open to the possibility that one does not know everything about themselves and that we may embellish our truths to keep ourselves loved, secure, and safe.

Q: What is different about Lacanian psychoanalysis?
A: In a nutshell: The focus is not on perfect self-understanding, or reaching an ideal state of being and relating, but instead it is on our relationship to enjoyment, desire, values, suffering, and knowledge. Like other psychoanalytic schools, it privileges the unconscious, examining one’s personal history and one’s struggles with the difficult questions around love and work.