How Much Are You Willing to Spend?
The cost and time of psychoanalysis aren't just about money — too high a price inflates expectations, too low devalues the work itself.
Notes
Short pieces on psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and inner life.
Psychoanalysis in Your Native Language
Language structures the psyche from birth — why working in analysis in your native language reaches what gets lost in translation.
A Note on the Mystic Writing-Pad, or What Is Our Psyche Like?
Freud compared the psyche to a “mystic writing pad” — what we've forgotten, it turns out, still remembers us.
The Idea of Norm and Pathology in Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis works without diagnoses or labels — only the unique psychic reality of each person.
Why Psychoanalysis, and Not…?
Psychoanalysis works not with the symptom itself, but with what it means for this particular person.
Where Do Free Associations Lead?
The method of free association, first proposed by Freud in 1892, remains the core of psychoanalysis today.
The Psychoanalysis of Migration
The history of psychoanalysis is itself a history of migration — starting with Freud himself.
Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Psychoanalyst…
Psychologist, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst — what actually separates these specialists?
What Is the Analyst Thinking?
Every analysand arrives well-informed — but what does the analyst feel in that same moment?
Learning from the Patient
Patrick Casement's book on how a psychoanalyst learns from every single patient.
The Setting as a Tool
Place, time, and payment: the psychoanalytic setting is itself a therapeutic instrument.
Silence = Communication
Silence in session isn't empty — it's one of the most telling tools an analysis has.
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, or Freud on Slips and Lapses
Slips of the tongue, forgetting, small everyday mistakes — not accidents, but a window onto the unconscious.
The Screen Memory
A seemingly trivial childhood memory can turn out to be a screen for something far more important.
The Chicago Seven Psychosomatic Illnesses
Seven illnesses in which the psychoanalyst Alexander first recognised psychological causes.
Phobias
A phobia is less a fear of an outside object than an answer to a threat inside the psyche.
Skin in Psychoanalysis
Skin is the one visible organ where what happens deep in the psyche can surface.
The Unconscious vs. “The Subconscious”
Psychoanalysis has no concept of “the subconscious” — only the Unconscious, Preconscious, and Conscious.
The Good Enough Mother
Winnicott coined “the good enough mother” — and lifted the weight of having to be a perfect one.
Children's Dreams
A child's dream is, in Freud's words, “an undisguised fulfilment of a wish.”
Freud's Typical Dreams
Freud singled out dreams nearly everyone has had: of nakedness, of running late, of flying, of falling.
Analysis Terminable and Interminable
Freud himself asked when an analysis can really be considered finished.
The Effort to Drive the Other Person Crazy
Harold Searles described the unconscious ways one person can try to “drive another crazy.”
Interpreting a Child's Drawing in Psychoanalysis
“A child tells itself through drawing” — Françoise Dolto on children's art in session.
Winnicott's Squiggle Game
Winnicott's “squiggle game” turns a scribble into a key to a child's inner world.
Dreams — the Royal Road to the Unconscious
Freud's “Interpretation of Dreams” opened the dream as the royal road to the unconscious.
Baby Observation
The Baby Observation method lets a clinician witness the development of the psyche from the very first days of life.
You or Your Reflection?
The first time a child sees their own reflection, they don't immediately recognize it as themselves — a key moment in psychic development, per Françoise Dolto.
Françoise Dolto and Maison Verte
Françoise Dolto created the "Green House" — a free space for families with young children that anyone can walk into without an appointment.