Psychoanalysis

One service offered at The Psychology Clinic is psychoanalytic treatment. In psychoanalytic theory, every person (usually termed a ‘subject’) has thoughts, motivations, and desires that are barred from conscious awareness, which is to say, they are unconscious. There is no means of direct access to the unconscious. Instead, psychoanalysts, like other psychotherapists deal with the subject’s language. Where language fails – and, at some point, it always fails – the unconscious joins in the conversations by other means, such as dreams, slips of the tongue, bungled actions, and, particularly, symptoms.

There are thousands of psychoanalysts across the world, and many different schools of psychoanalysis. Around half of these psychoanalysts identify themselves as Lacanian, after the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981). There are several Lacanian schools in Melbourne. Psychoanalysis is non-directive, and generally long-term – it is not a ‘quick fix’. Its aim is to use language to explore how a subject’s enjoyment, desire and fantasy are linked to formations of the unconscious, such as symptoms.

If you would like to consider entering into psychoanalytic treatment, please contact us for further information.