The talking cure
Freud
The talking cure
FreudThe approach
One does not end up consulting a psychoanalyst purely by chance — it is because things are no longer bearable
What runs through you
What is going on with me? What is wrong with me?
Where is it coming from? What do I truly want?
Why is it so painful? Why do I feel so low?
And who am I, really?
You may have already tried to seek help from those around you — family, friends or acquaintances — but nothing has really made a difference and the same questions are still lingering, painful and unresolved. The list of ailments one can be swamped by is endless: despair, anxiety, blockage, stuckness, stress, depression, fears, panic attack, feeling of strangeness, phobias, hallucinations… an inability to understand what is actually happening to you. Whatever the matter, eventually you reach a point where you cannot cope with it any longer but you are not able to get rid of it either.
One day, you decide to meet a psychoanalyst — someone who is there to hear your own singular speech and to support you on the path that is yours, like no other.
You then embark on what Freud, following one of his female patients, called the talking cure.
In this setting, there is no judgement. You are welcome to talk freely and openly. You can express everything you wish, everything that weighs heavy on you and prevents you from living a more fulfilling life.
I invite you to come and speak freely and in complete confidence, in psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic sessions.
Psychoanalysis
At the end of the 19th century, through listening to his patients, namely his female patients, Freud, who had trained as a neurologist, discovered (or invented — this is debatable) what he called the unconscious and thus founded psychoanalysis, "the talking-cure". With speech, both the unconscious and suffering emerge. The unconscious, this unknown territory, which rules our lives in spite of us, without us being aware of it or willing it… in other words without us!
Freud identified the manifestations of the unconscious in dreams, "the interpretation (of which) is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious", but also in symptoms, slips of the tongue and in "faulty" bungled actions.
When they happen, all these phenomena seem strange and somehow removed from ourselves, from what we wanted to say or do — but they precisely reveal our truth, unbeknownst to us.
In 1953, Lacan who was a psychiatrist, began his "return to Freud", whose teaching and practice had been altered by the proponents of the ego psychology, in vogue at the time in the United States. He never ceased to teach and discuss Freud's theory, whilst also intervening in it, renewing it. He emphasized the links Freud had established between the unconscious and speech, building on the concepts of structuralism, "the unconscious is structured like a language".
If every unconscious is unique — there aren't two identical people in the world! — the laws ruling it are the ones of the chain of discourse, also called the "signifying chain" (structured by metaphor and metonymy), in other words, the very unique ways in which each of us expresses ourselves.
One can compare the psychoanalyst to a linguist who helps decipher what our words stand for, in order to open up the realm of possibilities and for desire to arise.
We are humans, and we have relations with one another only by speech.
— Montaigne, Essays, I, 9
Practical questions
What to expect?
A change! The aim of the psychoanalytic treatment is not only to reduce one's suffering and symptoms, but to live a better and more fulfilling life. In fact, from the very first sessions, one often feels a relief on turning to someone who listens to what you have to say. Then, as you go along speaking, an analytic work produces effects, changes and revelations which modify our symptoms and cast a new light on our life.
Experienced session after session, a "true speech" emerges, according to Lacan, producing knowledge about oneself which is synonymous with freedom.
The work of the analysand
In order to gain access to the unconscious, psychoanalysis offers no "quick-fix" or "miracle solution," but only "work" to be done by the analysand: to speak his or her intimate truth, following the only rule Freud set for his patients: Say everything that comes to your mind. Talking without self-censorship means putting one's being into play while speaking to a psychoanalyst who hears and notices things beyond what we think we are saying.
With speech as our only means, the unconscious can unfold before us and let us decipher the symptom. Only through speaking can we discover this other, unknown part of ourselves.
For Lacan, the psychoanalytical setting allows us to let the truth speak.
What kind of treatment?
The length of the therapy varies from one person to another. While some are long-term, others may be shorter and still have a therapeutic effect.
In any case, you are free to end the therapy whenever you decide.
The length of the sessions and the cost
One of Lacan's contributions to the psychoanalytical setting is the idea of the variable session: the length of the session is not fixed, but depends on what is said (the logical timing of one's speech is not the clock's timing). Nevertheless, sessions last approximately 20-50 minutes.
The cost and the frequency (one or more sessions per week) are discussed during the first session.
Psychoanalyst in a few words
Unlike other mental health professionals such as psychiatrists and psychologists, there is no specific diploma to become a psychoanalyst.
The decision to become one is the culmination of a life's journey and of a very long analysis. The training through the study of texts and the reflection that accompanies it are… endless!
About me
PhD in Literature (Docteure ès Lettres), University of Denis Diderot (Paris 7), dissertation with a Lacanian orientation.
I am an Associate Member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR) in London, and a member of the Lacanian Forum of London which is part of the International of Forums — School of Psychoanalysis of the Forums of the Lacanian Field (IF-SPFLF).
I regularly attend the clinical and theoretical seminars of the Clinical Psychoanalytic College of Paris (Collège de Clinique Psychanalytique de Paris).
For many years, I was part of the Psychosis Therapy Project (PTP) run by the charity Mind in Islington (London), where I used to meet patients every week as a volunteer.
Get in touch
I see patients by appointment only, in a confidential and caring setting.