In the therapy room, shame – which we often hide, almost at any cost – frequently hinders progress. Clients sometimes conceal aspects of their behaviour they fear are shameful, such as viewing pornography, taking class A drugs, or losing their temper. This is because it is perhaps one of the most intense and complex feelings…
Becoming a psychoanalytic psychotherapist is a deeply transformative process. It changes the way we understand others and gradually reshapes our relationship with ourselves. The training asks us to move through dense theoretical material while cultivating a steady emotional presence, and this mirrors the kind of work we hope to offer our clients. The water we…
Our early experiences can shape how we relate to ourselves and others in the present. Often, the survival strategies we developed in childhood can remain with us well into our adult life. One lesser-known but very important survival response is called ‘fawning’, and is often discussed in the context of the other well-known responses of…
Spend ten minutes on social media and you’d think trauma therapy is a rare, specialist service that only a select few therapists can offer. The implication is clear: most therapy isn’t “trauma-informed,” so you need to shop for the right label. This is marketing, not clinical reality. If you are in depth psychotherapy, psychoanalytic, psychodynamic,…
Two key issues with large online therapy platforms One of the first things I tend to ask new patients in a consultation is about their previous experience of therapy. Increasingly, I’m hearing that somewhere along this journey they have tried an online therapy platform – such as BetterHelp or Talkspace. This isn’t surprising. The advertising…
We all experience negative thoughts and sometimes these thoughts can be painful, undermining and leave us feeling worthless. Some people simply try to tolerate them, and others might feel they are deserved – or even criticise themselves for having them in the first place. But is there another way to work with negative thoughts? What…
Winnicott’s radical insight: There is no such thing as a baby Winnicott’s claim that “there is no such thing as a baby” is one of those deceptively simple psychoanalytic truths that resists being reduced to metaphor. He wasn’t being poetic. He meant it literally: there is no baby in isolation. There is always a baby…
EMDR has become one of the most talked-about psychotherapy treatments – and for good reason. Extensive research has shown that it is one of the most effective approaches developed so far for trauma and chronic pain. It is recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). The acronym stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and…
Masochism is perhaps one of the most misunderstood clinical structures in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It has been removed from the DSM for largely political reasons and has thus disappeared from the psychological lexicon. It is a term that is conflated with victimhood, reactivity, or submission; however, its true meaning as a personality style is more complex….
In recent years, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) has become a trending topic on social media, particularly on platforms like TikTok. Short-form videos often depict individuals rapidly switching between so-called “alters,” complete with visual and behavioural cues. The implication—sometimes explicit, often subtle—is that these portrayals are representative of DID. They are not. Clinically, DID remains one…
Why psychotherapists must remain vigilant about boundaries Despite training, supervision, and ethical guidelines, psychotherapists—like all human beings—remain vulnerable to lapses in judgment. At best, these take the form of clinical misattunements. At worst, they can result in serious boundary violations with lasting harm. Understanding the structural and psychological functions of boundaries is essential to safeguard…
“… the truth is that if division and violence define war, the world has always been at war and always will be; if man is waiting for universal peace in order to establish his existence validly, he will wait indefinitely: there will never be any other future”. (Beauvoir, 1948, p.128-9) It is hard to look…