Our Mission, Aims, and Values

What is special about Psychoanalytic thinking and practice?

What is psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is a broad body of theory and associated treatment which recognises the important and powerful role that is played by the unconscious in all of our actions and in our personal and social relationships.

What are psychoanalytic therapies?

Psychoanalytic therapies prioritise attention to the unconscious in our relationships, including in the relationship between the patient/client and therapist, and the patient’s relationship with him or herself.  In the safe environment of the consulting room, with a psychotherapist who is respectful and interested, previously unrecognised wishes, thoughts and feelings can be helpfully acknowledged and engaged with. At the same time, people come to therapy to find out who they are, what motivates them, and how they can most creatively live with the realities of their lives, their personalities and their circumstances.

Psychoanalytic thinking is the bedrock on which both psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy are built. This therapy works because we seek to engage with pain, distress and conflict without avoiding or glossing over them. It often takes both time and patience, and it can be life-changing.

Psychoanalytic thinking can be applied:

• To work at varying levels of intensity with individuals – sometimes several times a week, sometimes once a week, either short term (weeks) or long term (several years) or anything in between, or in a single consultation
• To thinking about relationships within and between organisations
• To considerations of social policy and social justice
• To many areas of academic discourse

In all of these areas we seek to think about the core areas of distress or conflict, and establishing an environment that supports development in an open, flexible and exploratory way.