Psychoanalysis is intertwined with love, as are all human interactions. Without a doubt, love serves as the core driving force in our everyday relationships, romantic connections, our careers, and also in treatment. Freud called this form of love transference. In contrast to animals’ focus on survival, reproduction, and basic necessities, humans yearn for more intricate fulfillment in life. Our distinct ability to speak, to use language to connect with others, introduces both connection and intricacy.
Expressing thoughts accurately is a persistent challenge due to language’s limitations, as misunderstandings are inevitable. So, how can one feel understood and find a sense of stability, balance, and belonging in the external world? Conveying the richness of our ideas and intentions remains an ongoing work in progress. I have been trained to listen clearly to you, without my own feelings or judgments. What you are addressing in treatment may, at times, reveal something core to your experience, which can sometimes be painful.
The Names We Are Given Shape Us
While our childhoods are shaped by our families and loved ones’ involvement in our birth and upbringing, this alone isn’t sufficient to define who a person becomes. We transcend our given names, histories, and narratives, which are often constructed by external childhood influences. Yet, we desire to inhabit our own bodies, our own voices, and lead our own lives. However, this can only occur when one acknowledges and can effectively articulate their responsibility in treatment. I sometimes work with parents who find it difficult to assume parenting roles due to their own unresolved childhood experiences.
Lacanian psychoanalytic treatment seeks to enable transformation through desire. For the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, living and acting in harmony with one’s unconscious desires, rather than relying on rationality, is at the core of this process. This principle is central to my work with you.
Psychoanalysis: Love as the Driving Force in Life and Suffering
As human beings, we often find ourselves falling in love without fully knowing the initial spark that ignited our feelings for others. This might appear to us as a fleeting thought that brought about a delightful sensation or even feelings of resentment, such as the moment when you first notice someone. You can have contradictory feelings toward the same person.
Your friends or family interpret your actions through their own version of reality, emerging from their unconscious thoughts, desires, and conscious narratives. Your experiences lie somewhere between what you receive through any form of contact, physical or verbal, and the meanings you make from these encounters. To an untrained listener, these may seem inconsequential or insignificant details, often ignored. However, these moments carry profound effects and significance.
How a Psychoanalytic Treatment May Unfold
People bring diverse and distinct concerns that shape their sessions. Early sessions focus on these issues. The treatment and our work evolve through speech, not a fixed formula. Over time, progress unfolds as we listen closely to your thoughts in later sessions, guiding the direction of treatment.
The individuals I work with often seek control over pressing matters that have long occupied their thoughts and lives. These matters tend to become urgent, involving complexities, difficulties, and even traumatic experiences that recur. While problematic and distressing, these issues often remain inaccessible to the person.
We may act in ways that please our loved ones or to feel better about ourselves, yet we may unconsciously ignite conflicts between ourselves and others. Rather than seeking immediate answers, the focus shifts to uncovering the underlying meanings involved in conflicts, passivity, or agreeableness. Our daydreams, fantasies, constructed realities, and traces of childhood trauma implicate us in the world. Psychoanalysis involves exploring influential figures who shape our lives and identities, whether we admire, despise, love, or idealize them and seeking the qualities we envy or appreciate.
Eventually, we start to see certain threads emerge in the sessions. By following these threads, we can uncover core aspects of who you are. These strings pull and push you in different directions, and over time, we detach and untangle them.
Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Payment for Treatment
For Lacanian psychoanalysis in Melbourne, sessions tend to be regular and more than once a week. Some of my patients start with 1-2 sessions a week and eventually increase to 3-4 sessions per week. I typically try to find a time for us to talk during the initial sessions, and this context sets the pace for our work. Many practitioners maintain waitlists for patients, but I do not. If I believe we can work together in treatment, I will offer a time where I have availability. Once we agree on a time, we can continue working during those scheduled sessions.
Many of my patients prefer not to use Medicare. However, if you wish to access Medicare rebates, you can obtain a valid referral letter. According to government guidelines, the number of Medicare rebates for 2023 has been reduced to 6-10, which is insufficient for ongoing psychological treatment. Most people who see me discuss payment during the initial sessions and consider paying privately for long-term treatment. Sessions in Lacanian analysis tend to be regular, and the regularity of Lacanian psychoanalysis sessions are integral to its effectiveness. I charge everyone the same fee for the initial sessions. However, as the treatment unfolds, the frequency and nature of the sessions may lead to an adjustment in the fee, which is intended to support the continuity of the analysis. The fee structure facilitates the patient’s analysis and pays for my time.
Psychoanalysis and the Gap Between Thought and Action
Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” However, psychoanalysis suggests that existence often resides in the gap between thought and action. Who are you in the space between where you think you are and where you truly are? This gap may be a geographical location, a state of mind, or both. Sometimes, people move from place to place, or migrate, yet still struggle to find this “goldilocks” spot within themselves. This sense of belonging is not something that can be thought or reframed; it thinks you. The absence of thought in one’s actions unknowingly drives every decision, accident, mistake, good fortune, or outcome in one’s life. These unconscious fantasies drive all aspects of one’s interactions and relationships.
For example, someone may find that what they say always offends others, or another person may constantly miss deadlines or turn in late work. While these may seem like simple mistakes or matters of luck, to a psychoanalyst who listens carefully, these seemingly simple actions carry unconscious meanings that we explore and work through in the sessions.