Anna M. A. Sergent

Why do we keep having the same arguments with those we love? Why does a small remark from someone linger for days? Why do we sometimes feel inexplicably stuck?

This series, Navigating the Unseen: A Psychoanalytic Exploration, takes up questions like these, not with answers or solutions, but with a different kind of attention. Psychoanalysis begins where things are not immediately clear. It turns toward what doesn’t quite add up, what resists change, or what recurs without obvious reason.

Rather than offering advice, these posts are meant to open a space for reflection, for noticing how our psychic life is shaped by what we don’t fully know about ourselves. Not everything can be made conscious, but something shifts when we begin to listen differently.

What to Expect

Each entry will begin with something familiar: a scene from everyday life, a common experience, or a small moment that raises a larger question. These vignettes will serve as an entry point into psychoanalytic thinking, not to interpret or explain away, but to linger with what might otherwise go unexamined.

Repetitions and Their Meanings

You realise you’ve fallen into the same kind of relationship again. Or found yourself reacting in a way that feels oddly scripted. What is repetition doing here, and why does it feel at once frustrating and familiar?

Psychoanalysis listens for these recurring patterns, not to stop them, but to understand how they function. What do we gain from repeating? What is being held in place, and what might be remembered or even reconfigured?

Understanding the Symptom

A racing heart. A refusal to speak. An inability to leave the house. Not all symptoms are messages; some are compromises, attempts by the psyche to manage internal conflict or inhibition, even if the outcome becomes unbearable.

This post will explore how psychoanalysis approaches the symptom not just as a sign to decode, but as something formed dynamically, and therefore capable of transformation.

An Outlook on Change

You want to approach things differently, yet feel held back. It's not laziness or a lack of willpower; instead, there's a deeper conflict at play. 

In analysis, resistance is not viewed as something to eliminate, but rather as a phenomenon to observe. When listened to carefully, resistance can serve as a guide, not necessarily toward progress, but toward truth.

The Experience of Boredom in Therapy

You sit in silence, unsure of what to say. Time seems to stretch. Is anything happening?

Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips says: “Boredom, I think, protects the individual, makes tolerable for him the impossible experience of waiting for something without knowing what it could be. So that the paradox of the waiting that goes on in boredom is that the individual does not know what he was waiting for until he finds it, and that often he does not know that he is waiting… Clearly, we should speak not of boredom, but of boredoms, because the notion itself includes a multiplicity of moods and feelings that resist analysis; and this, we can say, is integral to the function of boredom as a kind of blank condensation of psychic life.” In psychoanalytic work, boredom isn’t just stagnant time, it may mark a threshold, where something new could begin, or where the familiar starts to loosen its grip.

Beyond Happiness. The Aims of Psychoanalysis

We often imagine therapy as a path toward happiness. But what kind of happiness do we mean, and is it something we can, or should, sustain?

Happiness, in the psychoanalytic sense, is not a fixed goal. It's a moment, often fleeting, and perhaps necessarily so. If we were happy all the time, we might not notice what is missing, what’s off, or what needs to be spoken. 

Psychoanalysis doesn’t aim to make people happier, but more truthful, able to speak from a place that is uniquely their own.

This series doesn’t offer solutions. Instead, it proposes a shift in how we listen, to ourselves, to our symptoms, to our silences. Perhaps what changes first is not the symptom, but our relation to it.

If you’re interested in exploring this kind of work or would like to schedule a consultation, I see patients in Stratford (E20), Archway, and West Hampstead. You can also visit the FAQs to learn more about how I work, what sessions involve, and whether long-term psychoanalytic therapy may be a good fit for you.