Author: anna.sergent22@gmail.com

Many people first seek psychotherapy because of a troublesome mental health symptom or symptoms that do not go away and repeat. It might be anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, relationship issues that reoccur, or a difficult habit (repeating behaviours, spiralling thoughts) that it is hard to let go of, doesn’t matter how much you try. Mental health symptoms can feel disruptive and sometimes, it seems like they take over your life. They interfere with what you really want to do, get in the way of work and relationships, and can leave you feeling as though something is wrong with you. Something that needs to be fixed and get rid of.

It is only natural to want troublesome symptom to go away. Yet in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, symptoms are not simply treated as problems to be eliminated after a set number of sessions. Mental health symptoms are also signals, a way the mind communicates something that cannot yet be expressed directly in words. Psychoanalysis says that symptoms have some sort of function that is why they do not disappear so easily. Even if symptom did disappear without the working through process taking place, it can re-appear in different form. This is what makes a psychoanalytic approach different from models that focus only on symptom management.

What kinds of symptoms bring people to psychotherapy?

Symptoms can take many forms. Some of the most common reasons people contact me for therapy include:

• Persistent anxiety or panic attacks
• Ongoing low mood or depression
• Repeating relationship difficulties
• Work stress and burnout
• Problems with sleep
• Feelings of emptiness or lack of meaning
• Addictions or compulsive behaviours
• Questions around identity or self-esteem

Often, someone begins therapy with one of these difficulties in mind, but over time discovers that the symptom is part of a wider pattern in their life. Everything connects somehow, which is why ready-made answers and solutions towards “the source” of a symptom rarely hold up for long.

How psychoanalysis understands symptoms

In psychoanalysis, a symptom is not just a problem to get rid of. It is often a sign of something unspoken or unresolved, connected to the unconscious in a specific way for the particular person, this is why it is difficult to find a truly working one-size-fits-all approach to treating symptoms. A symptom may be the mind’s way of expressing a conflict or wish that cannot yet be acknowledged directly.

For example:

• Anxiety may point to something feared but not yet recognised.
• A depressive symptom may hold unspoken anger, guilt, or a sense of loss.
• An addiction may be a way of escaping feelings that otherwise feel overwhelming.

This does not mean a symptom is ‘good’ or something to accept passively. But it does mean that a symptom may hold clues about what is going on beneath the surface. If therapy only aims to remove it and the symptoms that inevitably follow, it can miss the chance to get to the root.

Why do symptoms feel so disruptive

Symptoms often disrupt daily life, but what makes them particularly difficult is their hidden quality. A panic attack might appear suddenly, without warning. An intrusive thought might feel alien, as though it does not belong to you. A compulsion might feel both irresistible and pointless at the same time.

There can also be resistance to change itself. Getting closer to what lies behind the symptom often feels unfamiliar or unsettling. This is why psychoanalytic psychotherapy is gradual and unfolds at your pace, allowing space to discover, assimilate, and reflect. Over time, it supports a different way of thinking about yourself and others.

The source or meaning of a symptom is not always obvious or linear. It can feel confusing, messy, even irrational, to talk about what arises in sessions. This can add another layer of distress, leaving someone not only struggling with the symptom but also fearing it says something “bad” about who they are. Part of the work is to move away from such binary categories of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and to begin to find more complexity and even a different sense of aesthetics in one’s inner and outer life.

The problem with simply removing symptoms

When a symptom is removed without being unpacked, another often takes its place. The symptom changes its form, but the underlying conflict remains.

Take the example of someone who struggles with drinking and, after many months as a member of AA, manages to stop. On the surface, the problem looks resolved. Yet rather than easing, their frustration shifts into anger and harsh judgement of others who drink. The difficulty has not disappeared; it has simply found a new outlet.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, this can occur because the symptom was serving a previously hidden function. Once the drinking is taken away, the feelings it was masking need to go somewhere, and they may reappear in another form.

This is why a psychoanalytic approach does not aim only at symptom removal. Instead, it creates space to explore what the symptom may be pointing to, so that a deeper and more lasting change becomes possible.

What psychoanalytic psychotherapy offers

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy provides a place to begin speaking freely, and to get used to speaking freely, often without the self-censorship or self-judgement that initially makes people wonder whether what they say is “useful.” In this space, the symptom can gradually loosen its grip on both mind and body.

This does not happen through quick techniques or surface strategies, but through careful listening. Over time, connections emerge. A symptom that once seemed arbitrary begins to make sense in the wider context of a person’s history and relationships. Rather than being simply a burden, the symptom becomes a point of entry into understanding oneself more fully.

The possibility of lasting change

By attending to symptoms in this way, psychoanalysis does not promise an immediate fix. But it does offer the possibility of lasting change. The work is not about endlessly analysing or finding hidden meanings in every gesture. Instead, it is about allowing space for something new to emerge, so that life is no longer organised mainly around the symptom.

Many people find that as this process unfolds, symptoms lose their grip. More importantly, they begin to feel freer in how they live, relate, and make choices. The symptom that once dominated their life may recede, not because it was forcibly removed, but because it is no longer needed in the same way.

Taking the first step

If you are struggling with symptoms such as anxiety, low mood, or difficulties that keep repeating, psychotherapy can provide a way forward. Psychoanalytic therapy does not aim to silence symptoms but to help you understand what they might be saying and in that process, open the possibility of change.

I offer sessions in East London (Stratford, Stratford East Village, Hackney). If you would like to find out more, you can contact me to arrange an initial consultation.

We often think of change as linear, move forward, don’t look back. But when it comes to relationships, especially the ones that stay with us long after they end, the past has a way of repeating itself. This blog explores how psychoanalysis understands repetition not as failure or inertia, but as something alive and meaningful. What do we repeat, and why? And could the very pattern we feel trapped in be holding the key to something we haven’t yet been able to say?

Early in My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante sketches a friendship that’s anything but simple. Elena and Lila’s bond is immediate, electric, and often unbearable. There’s a hunger in it: intellectual, emotional, almost physical. But just as strongly, there’s tension. Rivalry. A relentless push and pull. Elena is drawn in, inspired, and repeatedly diminished by Lila’s brilliance. The relationship ignites her, wounds her, and never quite lets her go.

As the girls grow, drift apart, reconnect, and compete, the dynamic repeats itself. A rhythm of idealisation and resentment, closeness and distance, loops back again and again.

It’s a pattern that many will recognise – not necessarily in the form Ferrante describes, but in the emotional choreography. The feeling of returning to an oddly familiar relationship dynamic, even when the people and context are new. The friendship ends, or fades, or shatters, but the questions remain. Why did this happen again? What was I drawn to? What was I trying to resolve?

We tend to think of repetition as a path to improvement. “Practice makes perfect,” we say, as if repeating something is always a way of getting better. But relational repetition doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like being caught in a loop.

Psychoanalysis listens closely to these returns. Not to stop them or fix them, but to ask: What is this repetition doing? What memory might it be holding in place, something remembered without words? What hidden script is being played out again, not quite consciously, but with unmistakable emotional force?

We may enter a friendship or relationship believing it’s new, spontaneous, and a clean slate. But something familiar draws us in. A dynamic that echoes earlier bonds. Perhaps a hope that this time, things will be different. This time, we’ll be seen, understood, and chosen. And when that doesn’t happen, the hurt feels not just current, but historical, saturated with past disappointment.

Still, repetition isn’t just a sign of failure. There’s something alive in it. We repeat because we are trying – again and again – to come closer to what couldn’t be grasped the first time. It may be clumsy, painful, or even self-sabotaging. But it’s rarely meaningless. In fact, it might be the most meaningful thing about us.

To repeat is not necessarily to remain unchanged. Each repetition is a little different. Something slips. Something shifts. There’s always the possibility, however small, for the pattern to break, for something new to emerge. Not through willpower, but because repetition itself starts to unravel.

We repeat to learn. Children rehearse words, dancers drill steps, and musicians practise scales. Repetition gives us fluency, familiarity, and a sense of control. But not all repetitions are conscious or chosen. Some return like echoes. We find ourselves having the same argument, choosing the same kind of partner, reacting in ways that feel scripted. We ask ourselves, Why do I keep doing this?

Freud called this repetition compulsion: the drive to return to unresolved scenes or dynamics. Not for pleasure, but in an attempt—often unconscious—to master what once overwhelmed us. We circle back, not to re-live, but to finally make sense of what was too much to bear the first time. And yet, in repeating, we may also be defending against something even more disruptive: the unknown, the truly new.

Here lies the paradox. Repetition can be a way of avoiding change, of staying in familiar discomfort rather than facing what we can’t yet name. But within the cracks of repetition, something else might insist on being heard. Psychoanalysis listens for that. Not to correct, but to understand: What’s being protected? What’s being remembered? What’s waiting to emerge?

You notice you’ve ended up in a similar relationship again. Or caught in a reaction that doesn’t feel entirely your own. What’s repetition doing here—and why does it feel both frustrating and strangely known?

Perhaps repetition isn’t a sign that nothing is happening. Perhaps it’s the sign that something is happening, but not yet visible. What looks like stuckness might be holding something in place. A necessary pause, buying time for something new to form.

Rather than asking, Why haven’t I changed?, psychoanalysis invites a subtler question:

What is my repetition trying to tell me about what I lost, what I’m avoiding, and what I’m trying to repeat until it finally speaks?

This kind of change rarely happens all at once. The retranslation of repetition, turning something compulsive into something that can be thought about, often takes time. It unfolds gradually, in the space between recognising the pattern and being able to do something different with it.

Recent calls to appoint a Minister for Play in the UK have sparked mixed reactions, some recognising the urgency of the issue, others responding with mild irony. At the heart of this proposal lies a growing concern: children today are playing less, and the neighbourhoods they grow up in are increasingly shaped by a lack of access to green spaces, playgrounds, and the freedom to roam.

What struck me in listening to the discussions was how easily the importance of play is dismissed, as though it’s a luxury rather than something essential. In my work as a psychotherapist, I often encounter adults in the midst of life, with its routines, demands, and silent burdens, it’s easy to lose sight of something once so natural it needed no explanation: play. It may appear frivolous, even irrelevant, yet in my work as a psychotherapist, I often find that the absence of play points to something vital lost, something quietly mourned. And sometimes, rediscovering it becomes a turning point in therapy.

Psychoanalytic thinkers such as D. W. Winnicott, Marion Milner, and Françoise Dolto placed great importance on play, not only as something central to childhood, but as a way of being that continues to matter throughout life. For them, play wasn’t just a developmental stage to be outgrown. It was, and remains, a space in which something essential about the self is formed, expressed, and at times, restored.

The Child’s World: Play as a Foundation for the Self

For the child, play is not a luxury. It is how they come into being. Winnicott’s idea of the “transitional object”, the well-loved teddy or blanket, highlights this beautifully. These objects inhabit what he called the “potential space,” a place between inner and outer reality. It’s here, in this space of not-knowing-yet-exploring, that the child begins to relate, imagine, and symbolise. And it’s here that the earliest threads of the self are woven.

Marion Milner’s work takes this further. Through her intimate self-reflections, she traced how doodling, seemingly an idle, unstructured activity, can bring unconscious material to light. For Milner, even the simplest forms of play held the capacity to disrupt fixed ways of thinking and to reawaken creativity, spontaneity, and psychic movement.

Similarly, Françoise Dolto understood that children often communicate most clearly through play. In play, the unspoken becomes visible. The child works through unformulated feelings, symbolises conflicts, and constructs meaning well before language can fully carry it.

When play is allowed, the child not only grows. They also begin to remember—the kind of remembering that is lived, felt, and embodied rather than recited. These early experiences form the texture of what will later emerge as childhood memories in psychotherapy.

The Echo of Absence: When Play is Withheld

But what of those for whom play was interrupted by trauma, parental absence, unspoken family pressures, or environments too chaotic or rigid to allow for spontaneity? What becomes of the self when there is no room to play?

In my practice, offering psychotherapy in East London and West Hampstead, I often meet adults who carry this absence in subtle yet painful ways. The consequences can surface as:

• A difficulty in expressing emotions freely
• A feeling of being creatively ‘stuck’
• A sense of having lived a life shaped more by what was expected than by what was felt
• A struggle to form intimate, unguarded relationships
• An inner harshness that leaves little room for the unexpected or the unplanned
  

In these cases, the absence of play is not trivial. It speaks to a deeper psychic loss. The playful self, the part that is curious, unafraid to fail, alive to surprise, may have been quietly exiled.

A Return Through Psychotherapy: Reclaiming the Playful Self

Psychotherapy offers a space to encounter this loss without rushing to repair it. Much like Winnicott’s potential space, the analytic room becomes a setting in which something new, sometimes fragile and slow, can begin to emerge. This may not look like play in the conventional sense, but the spirit of play is there: exploration without certainty, expression without judgement, and the freedom to try out new ways of being.

Through in-depth therapy, it becomes possible to:

• Reconnect with early childhood memories not as fixed narratives, but as living scenes still shaping the present
• Begin to loosen the grip of long-held internal structures
• Experiment with feeling, thinking, and relating differently
• Reclaim a sense of aliveness, creativity, and agency
  

This process is often subtle. It may involve the willingness to daydream again, to engage in an activity for its own sake, or to tolerate the unknown without needing immediate answers. Sometimes it means encountering one’s history with more gentleness. At other times, it means risking play in the here and now.

A Final Reflection

If you find yourself feeling emotionally constrained, overly responsible, or somehow disconnected from your capacity for joy, it may be worth asking: Where did play go? Was it ever truly there?

Rediscovering play is not about becoming childish, it’s about reawakening something in ourselves that may have been long silenced. As a psychotherapist based in East Village, Stratford and West Hampstead, I work with adults who are seeking to make sense of this absence and, gradually, to recover what was lost.

Whether through in-depth psychoanalytic work or long-term psychotherapy, the aim is not simply to return to childhood, but to discover new ways of living more fully, with a greater sense of inner freedom. And often, that begins with allowing ourselves to play.

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) 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.

A night out can become a suspension of the ordinary. It contrasts with the routines that structure daily life: work, study, and other obligations and demands. It offers a space where something other than the ordinary everyday may emerge, something unspoken, perhaps even unconscious. The music, the lights, and the movement of bodies create an atmosphere of excess, a pleasure that seems to extend beyond what is accepted in mundane lives. However, from a psychoanalytic perspective, this excess is never without structure. Even in apparent freedom, rules- sometimes unspoken but deeply felt- govern the experience.

At the heart of a night out is desire, that restless force that psychoanalysis tells us is never fully satisfied. Why do people go out? Is it to enjoy, forget, or lose themselves? Or is it to seek something just out of reach? The pleasure of dancing, of being surrounded by others, is tied to an expectation that something will happen, something will be different. The night holds a promise, though often undefined one.

Yet, within this pleasure, anxiety lingers. The psychoanalytic view of anxiety suggests that it is not simply about fear or discomfort; it arises at the point where desire and prohibition meet. A night out is structured by this tension. There is transgression, of limits, of norms, but within a contained space. A club or bar allows for rule-breaking in a sense, yet it is also governed by its own laws: social codes, the presence of bouncers, and the implicit expectations of how one should behave. One is free, but only within certain limits.

Excess Within Limits

There is something almost adolescent about the ritual of going out as if it repeats an early phantasy of liberation. In adolescence, becoming an adult is often imagined as escaping the parental gaze and finally being free to do as one wishes. But what is left unsaid is that this freedom is never absolute. The adolescent leaves the family home only to enter a different form of supervision, the ’authority’ of the nightclub, the expectations of a peer group, and the silent but ever-present influence of social norms.

Psychoanalysis reminds us that the Other, that great structuring force of language, law, and expectation, is never truly absent. Even in the most hedonistic environments, something or someone watches; something or someone structures the experience. The bouncer at the door, deciding who enters and who does not, embodies this authority. The DJ, setting the rhythm, dictates the night’s movements. Even the drink in hand serves as a kind of permission slip to relax and let go, but only to a certain extent. The nightclub is not a space of total freedom but of negotiated freedom, excess within limits.

Dancing and the Body in Psychoanalysis

In a nightclub, speech fades. Words become secondary to movement and the rhythm of bodies in space. The speaking, the conversation, with its emphasis on articulation, is momentarily abandoned. People try to shout over the music and gesticulate to aid expression; some lip reading is happening, too. Instead, there is an emphasis on a different kind of expression- one that is physical, bodily, perhaps closer to the drives than to language itself.

Psychoanalysis has long concerned itself with the body- not the biological body, but the body as it is experienced, shaped by desire and the unconscious. The dancefloor becomes a space where the body breaks free from its usual constraints. The everyday body, defined by posture and gestures formed through habit and social expectation, yields to a body that moves differently and expresses something beyond conscious control. This is why dancing can feel liberating yet also strange. The pleasure of losing oneself in movement can be unsettling as if one is stepping into an unfamiliar version of oneself.

There is a sense of jouissance in this excess, a pleasure that pushes against its limits and is almost overwhelming. A night out flirts with this threshold. There is enjoyment, but also the possibility of going too far, tipping into something that ceases to be a pleasure and becomes something else. This is the delicate balance of the night, between control and surrender, between enjoyment and a sort of dissolution.

The Return and the Aftermath

Every night out must come to an end. The music fades, the lights turn on, and the return to everyday life begins. The journey home is often accompanied by a quiet sense of loss. What felt so promising in the heat of the moment now seems distant, almost unreal. This transition from a space of excess to the structure of the ordinary reflects something fundamental about itself.

Desire, psychoanalysis tells us, is always in motion. It is never fully satisfied, and this is what keeps it alive. A night out operates in the same way. One goes out in search of something, and even if the night is enjoyable, it does not fully deliver. The next day, there is often the sense that something was missing, that the experience did not quite reach what was anticipated. And so, the cycle repeats; one goes out again, drawn back to the possibility that the night might offer something more next time.

Yet, something of the night lingers. The body carries traces of the experience: the tired muscles, the scent of sweat and smoke, and the vague recollections of conversations and moments shared. The unconscious, too, clings to these fragments. The desire for excess and transgression does not vanish with the rising sun. It remains, waiting for the next opportunity to emerge.

In this way, a night out is not merely an escape. It represents a negotiation with desire, prohibition, and the unconscious structures that shape our experience. It is a performance of freedom that is never entirely free, a ritual of pleasure always shadowed by its limits. Yet, within these constraints, something real is felt, if only for a moment, if only in the space between beats.

Franz Kafka’s Odradek, that strange, inexplicable figure from The Cares of a Family Man, offers a compelling way to think about something many of us sense but struggle to name: the persistence of something within a family line, something that endures without clear reason, renewing itself in each generation. Kafka’s creation, a small, lifeless yet animate object that resists definition, has often been read as a figure of the uncanny. Freud’s essay The Uncanny provides a way of thinking about this sense of unease, something at once familiar and alien, something we cannot quite rid ourselves of. When applied to the family, Odradek becomes a way of thinking about transgenerational transmission, those unconscious inheritances that refuse to disappear.

Odradek: A Thing Without Origin

Odradek is described as a tangle of thread, a spool-like object with no clear function. It speaks, yet it has no apparent life. It laughs in response to questions, suggesting a knowingness that remains inaccessible. Kafka’s narrator, a family man, is disturbed by its continued presence, yet Odradek does not seem to threaten him in any direct way. It simply is, persisting on the margins of his home, refusing to be discarded or understood. He wonders if it will outlive him, a thought that unsettles him deeply.

This persistence, its resistance to explanation, echoes what many experience in relation to family history. There are elements within a family that do not dissolve with time. They are not necessarily memories or conscious narratives, but something more elusive: a recurring pattern, an unspoken tension, a silence that shapes the atmosphere. Something that should not exist anymore yet continues. Like Odradek, it does not declare itself a problem, yet its endurance is troubling.

The Uncanny Return of the Past

Freud describes the uncanny as the return of something repressed. What was once familiar but has been forced into the unconscious, often in a distorted or fragmented form, finds its way back. Within families, this return is rarely straightforward. A traumatic event may not be spoken of, yet it finds expression in later generations through symptoms, repetitions, or unconscious identifications. What is not processed by one generation may persist in another, not as a memory, but as something felt, something acted out.

Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s work on transgenerational transmission expands on this idea. They describe how unspoken traumas, secrets, losses, and shame can be passed down not through direct communication but through an unconscious crypt. In this psychic structure, something remains buried yet active. The descendants may experience an unease, a compulsion, or a gap in their sense of self without knowing its source. They inherit something they cannot name.

Odradek captures this strange presence. It is a thing without clear history, yet it remains. It is not fully alive, but not entirely absent. It carries a trace of something unresolved outside of direct experience yet impossible to erase.

The Family as a Structure That Remembers

Families are not only made up of individuals. They are structures that persist beyond the lives of their members. A surname, a lineage, a place of origin hold a continuity that exceeds personal identity. But this continuity is not always smooth. It can carry repetitions that no one consciously chooses: a tendency toward withdrawal, a pattern of broken attachments, an anxiety that seems to have no clear source. These repetitions often emerge when history has not been fully spoken.

The psychoanalyst Francoise Davoine, drawing from her work with war survivors and their descendants, describes how traumatic histories live on in unexpected ways. A child may experience overwhelming anxiety at a certain age, only for it to be later revealed that this was the age at which a grandparent experienced a catastrophe. What was never discussed remains active, appearing as an inexplicable disturbance in a later generation.

Odradek reminds us that the past is never fully past. It survives in forms we do not always recognise. It may appear in a joke, a turn of phrase, or an inexplicable habit. It may be felt as a vague dread or as a compulsion to repeat what one does not understand. Its presence is not always ominous, but it resists disappearance.

Breaking the Cycle, or Learning to Listen

If something persists in a family, does that mean it must always continue? Psychoanalysis suggests that what returns does so because it has not been given a place. The uncanny is what has been denied but seeks recognition. In families, what is left unspoken does not disappear, it seeks another way to be known. This is not necessarily about uncovering a hidden story, though sometimes that is part of it. It is about making room for what has not yet been given space.

Odradek unsettles the father in Kafka’s story because it does not belong in the order of his home, yet it cannot be removed. This is how certain aspects of family history function. They do not fit into the official story, yet they remain. They are not fully acknowledged, yet they shape what follows. The question is why they persist and how we relate to them.

To recognise an inheritance does not mean to be bound by it. But to deny it often means to repeat it without knowing. At its best, psychoanalysis offers a space to hear what has been silenced. Where what seems nonsensical, like Odradek’s laughter, may reveal its logic. What persists may finally find its place, not as an unwanted ghost, but as something that can be thought about, spoken of, and transformed.

The question remains: what is it that persists in your own family, and what might it be trying to say?

The psychoanalytic process is often imagined as a deeply reflective and interpretative experience, one in which unconscious conflicts come to light, meanings unfold, and the patient gains insight. However, insight alone is not always transformative. Creativity is a crucial element that allows analysis to move beyond repetition. Donald Winnicott, with his seminal ideas on play and transitional space, offers a way to think about how creativity emerges within the analytic setting.

In this post, I will explore how time, uncomfortable feelings, and playing with reality shape the creative potential of the psychoanalytic process. Drawing on Winnicott’s ideas, I will argue that the analyst’s ability to engage with the patient in a space of play allows something new to emerge, something beyond mere intellectual understanding or symptom relief. It is in playing that analysis becomes truly alive.

The Lived and the Symbolic in Analysis

Time in psychoanalysis is not simply about the scheduled session; it is also about how past, present, and future fold into one another. Freud’s concept of Nachträglichkeit (often translated as “deferred action” or “afterwardness”) suggests that meaning is not fixed but continually reinterpreted over time. Similarly, Winnicott understood time not as a rigid structure but as something experienced subjectively within the potential space of analysis.

In the consulting room, time is often felt most intensely in moments of frustration, boredom, or waiting, when things are not happening as expected. There may be restlessness when an insight does not arrive quickly enough or when there is a feeling of being caught in a cycle of repetition. This discomfort can open up a creative opportunity. Rather than rushing to resolve the uncomfortable feelings, the analytic process invites a different approach: to stay with it, to play with it.

Uncomfortable Feelings as a Path to Creativity

Winnicott placed great importance on the capacity to be alone in the presence of another. He understood that this capacity develops in early relationships where a carer provides a “holding environment,” allowing the child to experience solitude without fear of abandonment. In analysis, this translates to the ability to tolerate silence, ambiguity, and even uncomfortable feelings without immediately trying to resolve them.

Many patients enter therapy hoping to rid themselves of painful emotions, anger, grief. While alleviation of suffering is important, psychoanalysis does something deeper: it allows the patient to experience their feelings differently. Rather than being overwhelmed by emotion or cutting off from it, they can begin to relate to it in a new way through play.

Uncomfortable feelings, when held within the analytic relationship, create tension that can lead to something unexpected. Instead of seeing distress as something to be “fixed,” Winnicott encourages us to think of it as something that can be worked with as raw material for play.

Analysis as Creative Process of Becoming

For Winnicott, play is fundamental to development, and he argued that all cultural life, art, religion, and even psychoanalysis itself, emerges from the capacity to play. In his classic text Playing and Reality, he describes a “potential space”, a zone between the individual and external reality where creativity and transformation occur.

The analytic setting, when it functions well, becomes such a space. It is neither purely internal nor purely external, it is a shared transitional space where meanings can shift, be tested, and be played with.

Consider a patient who rigidly adheres to their narrative: “I have always been this way; nothing can change.” They repeat a story about themselves as though it were a fact set in stone. The analyst, rather than directly challenging this, might introduce an element of play, perhaps by exaggerating a small detail, surprisingly rephrasing something, or allowing a moment of humour. This act of play disrupts the fixed narrative. It opens up a space where new possibilities emerge.

In moments like this, analysis becomes not just about interpretation but about experience, a lived, felt encounter where reality is not imposed but co-created.

The Analyst’s Role As ‘Not Just’ an Interpreter

Traditional views of the analyst often position them as an interpreter of hidden meanings. While interpretation remains crucial, Winnicott suggests that the analyst is also a participant in play.

This does not mean being lighthearted at all times. On the contrary, playing in analysis requires serious engagement with uncertainty. The analyst must be able to tolerate their own not-knowing, their own uncomfortable feelings, without rushing to provide certainty. This willingness to “not know” creates space for creative discovery.

Consider a patient who feels trapped in despair. If the analyst simply reflects this despair back, the session risks becoming another site of repetition. But if the analyst engages in a subtle act of play, perhaps by introducing a metaphor, using an unexpected word, or shifting the rhythm of their speech, something may shift. This is not about forcing change but about opening a space where something new can appear.

The Risk of Stagnation

Not all analytic work becomes creative. Some patients struggle to enter the space of play. For Winnicott, this difficulty is often rooted in early breaks in the holding environment, moments when play was met with rejection, ridicule, or intrusion.

When a patient cannot play, analysis risks becoming either too rigid (overly intellectualised, stuck in fixed interpretations) or too chaotic (without structure, lacking containment). The analyst must recognise when play is not yet possible and provide the necessary holding before creativity can emerge.

In some cases, the analyst’s own countertransference, perhaps a desire to provide quick insight or to avoid discomfort, can get in the way of play. Recognising this is part of the analytic process.

Why Play Matters in Analysis

Psychoanalysis is not just about insight; it is about transformation. Winnicott’s ideas on play show us that true change does not come from rigid interpretation alone but from the creative potential of the analytic space.

By allowing time to unfold in its own way, by staying with uncomfortable feelings rather than rushing to resolve them, and by engaging in play rather than rigid certainty, the analytic process becomes a living experience. It becomes a space where new ways of being, thinking, and feeling can emerge.

Ultimately, playing in analysis is not about trivialising suffering but about allowing something new to be created from it. In this way, psychoanalysis remains a profoundly creative act, one that does not merely explain the past but opens up new possibilities for the future.

The poem ‘Return to Tipasa’ by Albert Camus resonates with an experience that psychoanalysis encounters time and again: the co-existance and tension of opposites like hate and love, tears and smiles, chaos and calm.

“In the depth of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the depth of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the depth of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
In the depth of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
“Albert Camus “Return to Tipasa”

Albert Camus’ words in Return to Tipasa—“In the depth of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love”—resonate with an experience that psychoanalysis encounters time and again. What are we to make of this “invincible” presence within? Camus gestures towards something irreducible, something that persists beyond the dialectic of suffering and joy. A Lacanian reading invites us to consider this as the trace of the Real—that which resists symbolisation yet insists in the subject’s (2) life.

Camus’ lines suggest a structure, a kind of doubling: hate and love, tears and a smile, chaos and calm, winter and summer. These are not simple opposites, nor are they neatly reconciled; rather, they co-exist, producing tension within the subject. For Lacan, such a structure recalls the way the subject is caught between registers(1)—the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real—where each order plays its part in the constitution of experience. Camus’ words thus offer a way of thinking about how, beneath the conscious experience of despair or turmoil, there persists something unyielding, a kernel of jouissance (3) that refuses to be fully subsumed by the signifier.

The Dialectic of Hate and Love

“In the depth of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.”

Hate and love are frequently understood as opposites, yet Lacan’s teaching reveals their entanglement. Love, in a psychoanalytic sense, is never a pure force but is bound up with a lack, an incompleteness in the subject. The love that Camus discovers in the depth of hate is not necessarily an antidote to it, but rather its double, revealing how the subject is always structured around desire and lack.

Lacan often reminded us that love involves a fundamental misrecognition: “To love is to give what one does not have to someone who does not want it.” The subject in love seeks something in the other that will fill an absence, a structural incompleteness within themselves. Hate, too, is shaped by this absence—it is not mere rejection but a relation that binds the subject to the object of hate as much as love does.

In the clinic, one sees this most acutely in the transference, where a patient’s intense hostility towards the analyst is often a manifestation of unconscious love, or at least of a profound libidinal investment. The hatred can be read as a defence against the terror of desire, against the vulnerability that love exposes. If we follow Camus’ formulation, then hate carries within it a trace of the love it resists—an insight that resonates with Lacan’s claim that “there is no such thing as a relationship that is not marked by ambivalence.”

The Smile Beneath the Tears

“In the depth of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.”

To cry is to encounter a limit—the body breaks under affect, language falters. Yet within this breaking, Camus suggests, there is something invincible: the smile that persists beneath the tears. This recalls Lacan’s discussion of jouissance, a term that defies easy translation but connotes an excessive, paradoxical enjoyment, one that can be bound up with suffering itself.

One might think here of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where the compulsion to repeat painful experiences suggests that suffering itself may be a site of jouissance. In the Lacanian frame, this is the enjoyment that attaches itself to the symptom, the opaque satisfaction that keeps suffering in place. The “invincible smile” in Camus’ phrase could thus be read as an echo of this persistent jouissance, which remains even in the most sorrowful of states.

Chaos and the Desire for Order

“In the depth of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.”

Chaos, in the psychoanalytic sense, is not merely disorder but something more radical: the eruption of the Real. It is that which cannot be fully symbolised, the gaps and ruptures in meaning that the subject encounters in moments of crisis. Psychoanalysis does not seek to impose order upon this chaos, as much as modern psychology might tempt one to do. Rather, it acknowledges that the subject’s attempts to find meaning are always incomplete, always haunted by a remainder that resists integration.

Camus’ “invincible calm” might then be understood as something akin to what Lacan called the sinthome—a way in which the subject stabilises their relationship to the Real. It is not a resolution of chaos but a way of bearing it, a mode of existence that allows for the persistence of the subject despite the fundamental contingency of their being.

The Real of Summer in the Heart of Winter

“In the depth of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

Perhaps the most evocative of Camus’ formulations, this final image suggests something that outlasts the cycles of time, something enduring within the subject. Lacan spoke of the Real as that which is always there, beneath the fluctuations of the Symbolic and Imaginary. It does not develop or change but insists, returning again and again in different guises.

This “invincible summer” could be seen as akin to the ‘lalangue’—the pre-symbolic residue of language, the echoes of one’s earliest encounters with words and affects that remain lodged in the unconscious. It is a form of knowledge that is not intellectual but affective, and bodily. It persists even when the subject is plunged into crisis when the structures that sustain meaning collapse.

The Ethics of the Invincible

Camus’ reflections in Return to Tipasa offer us a poetic formulation of what Lacan conceptualised in more technical terms: the persistence of the Real, the paradoxical structure of desire, and the fundamental tension within the subject. His “invincible” forces—love, the smile, calm, summer—do not erase their counterparts but exist alongside them, revealing the way the subject is always divided, caught in an interplay of presence and absence.

Psychoanalysis does not promise to reconcile these tensions. Instead, it offers a way of working with them, of recognising how the subject is structured by lack and by what remains beyond meaning. Camus’ vision, like Lacan’s, is not one of harmony but of endurance. To find within winter an invincible summer is not to deny winter but to acknowledge that, even at the limits of despair, something persists.

In the end, psychoanalysis is less about curing the subject than about opening a space for them to encounter their own invincible core—not a self-contained essence, but the Real that insists, that shapes desire, and that remains beyond the grasp of language. Perhaps this is what Camus was reaching for—a recognition that, in the heart of suffering, something endures, something that resists erasure. And in that, there is life.

Notes

Registers: Real, Imaginary, Symbolic
The Real-That which resists symbolisation and cannot be fully grasped in language. It is what remains beyond meaning, often appearing in moments of rupture, trauma, or profound encounters with the limits of existence.

The Imaginary- The register of images, illusions, and identifications. It is closely linked to the ego and the way we ‘misrecognise’ ourselves and others, shaped by early experiences such as the mirror stage.

The Symbolic-The realm of language, law, and social structures. It organises meaning, placing the subject within the network of signifiers that determine their identity and relationships.

Subject
Used here instead of ‘a person,’ ‘a patient,’ or ‘an individual.’ The subject in Lacanian psychoanalysis is not a self-contained individual but a divided being, structured by language and lack. The subject is always caught between what they desire, what is expected of them, and what remains inaccessible to them in the Real.

Jouissance
A complex term that refers to an excessive form of enjoyment that goes beyond pleasure and can involve suffering. Unlike ordinary pleasure, which is regulated by social norms, jouissance can be transgressive, painful, and disruptive, linked to the subject’s unconscious repetitions and symptoms.

As the new year begins, many of us feel the pull of fresh possibilities—a sense of starting anew, leaving behind what no longer serves, and opening ourselves to what might emerge. Yet, what does it truly mean to encounter the new? Within psychoanalysis, the concept of newness is far from superficial; it is not about resolutions or reinvention in the ordinary sense. Instead, it involves a profound process of becoming. By weaving together insights from Lacan, Winnicott, and Bion, we might reflect on how psychoanalysis can illuminate the nature of newness as we step into the year ahead.

Lacan and Desire 

In Lacanian terms, newness is tied to the subject’s relationship with desire—the driving force that moves us towards the unknown, the elusive cause and the unattainable. The new year, often cloaked in fantasies of change and fulfilment, can highlight the gaps between what we think we want and what truly animates us.

Through the lens of Lacan, these gaps are not failures but openings. They invite us to confront the Real—the raw, unsymbolised aspects of experience that resist language yet demand engagement. In the analytic process, as in life, moments of newness may arise when the patient stumbles upon something unexpected in their speech, revealing a truth they did not know they were seeking. The challenge of the new year, then, is not to chase after the ideal but to remain attuned to the unspoken desires that shape our path.

Winnicott and the Potential Space

Winnicott offers a gentler but no less radical view of newness. For him, the capacity to create, to play, and to explore is fundamental to psychological health. The new year, with its rituals and traditions, can serve as a kind of potential space—a Winnicottian arena where the inner world meets the outer, allowing us to imagine and experiment with new ways of being.

In therapy, as in life, this creative space depends on a sense of safety and holding. The analyst, like the new year itself, offers an environment where the patient can tentatively explore the unknown. Yet, this exploration is not a blank slate; it carries traces of the past, which must be negotiated rather than erased. Newness emerges, not as an escape from what was but as a reconfiguration of it—a weaving together of continuity and change.

Bion and the Face of the Unknown

For Bion, the essence of newness lies in our capacity to think the unthinkable. The new year, often heralded as a time of clarity and direction, can also provoke uncertainty, anxiety, and confrontation with what we do not yet know. Bion’s concept of “thoughts without a thinker” reminds us that these raw, unprocessed elements of experience are not obstacles but opportunities.

In analysis, the emergence of newness involves tolerating periods of confusion and “not knowing” as essential steps towards transformation. The same holds true in life: the resolutions we make and the goals we set are meaningful only to the extent that they arise from a genuine encounter with ourselves, one that includes the messiness of our inner world.

Newness in the New Year, a Psychoanalytic Convergence

Viewed through the perspectives of Lacan, Winnicott, and Bion, the new year is not merely a moment in time but a process—a space where desire, creativity, and thought converge. Lacan teaches us to embrace the gaps and ruptures in our narratives as opportunities to discover something new in ourselves. Winnicott reminds us of the importance of play and potential space in reimagining ourselves. Bion invites us to sit with the discomfort of the unknown, trusting that something meaningful will emerge if we can bear it.

As we step into the year ahead, these psychoanalytic insights may guide us in more profound ways than any resolution ever could. Instead of striving to “fix” or “improve” ourselves, we might ask: How can I remain open to what I do not yet know about myself? How can I create space for the unexpected? And how can I use this year as an opportunity not to escape the past but to think it anew?

Perhaps the true gift of the new year is not a promise of change but the invitation to keep encountering ourselves—and the world—with fresh eyes. In this, the work of psychoanalysis and the passage of time share a common aim. Not to guarantee progress but to open the possibility of becoming.

The relationship between psychotherapy and ethics can be a subject of deep reflection. Donna Orange, through her interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas, challenges psychotherapists to rethink their role beyond technical expertise and toward ethical responsibility. This perspective aligns in unexpected ways with Lacanian psychoanalysis, despite their distinct frameworks. Here, I explore Orange’s understanding of Levinasian ethics and how a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective intersects with, complements, and perhaps even critiques it.

Ethics as the Foundation of Psychotherapy

Levinas, a 20th-century philosopher, places ethics at the heart of human existence. For him, the ethical relationship begins in the encounter with the face of the Other—an experience that calls us to responsibility. Donna Orange adopts this framework, urging psychotherapists to approach their work with humility, compassion, and an openness to the Other’s suffering.

Key principles from Orange’s interpretation include:

Responsibility Over Technique. Psychotherapy, in Orange’s view, is not primarily about interventions or interpretations but about responding to the Other’s vulnerability.

Witnessing Suffering. The therapist’s role is to bear witness to the patient’s pain, providing a relational presence that prioritises understanding over control.

Infinite Responsibility. Orange draws on Levinas’s notion that responsibility to the Other is infinite and non-reciprocal, meaning the therapist must remain attuned to the patient without expecting anything in return.

For Orange, psychotherapy is a profoundly ethical endeavor. This aligns with contemporary relational psychoanalytic perspectives, which emphasize mutuality and co-constructed meaning.

The Lacanian Perspective. Desire, Subjectivity, and Ethics

Lacan’s ethics, articulated most clearly in his Seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, is grounded in the concept of desire and the pursuit of one’s truth as a subject. Lacan’s famous injunction to “not give ground on your desire” invites a reflection on what it means to remain faithful to one’s unconscious, even when confronted with the demands of the Other.

From a Lacanian standpoint, ethics in psychoanalysis involves:

Respect for Subjectivity. The analyst must resist imposing meaning on the patient, allowing their unconscious to speak in its singularity.

Navigating the Real. The analyst’s role is to guide the patient toward confronting the Real—the unassimilable core of their experience—without offering comforting illusions.

Ethics of Desire. While Levinas emphasises the Other’s call, Lacan emphasises the subject’s responsibility to their desire, suggesting a tension between self and Other that complicates Orange’s Levinasian ethics.

The Intersection of Orange and Lacan

While Levinas, through Orange, and Lacan approach ethics from different angles, their perspectives can be seen as complementary in the therapeutic context.

Ethics as Responsibility to the Other

Both frameworks share a commitment to respecting the Other’s alterity. For Orange, this means attending to the patient’s suffering without judgment. For Lacan, this involves respecting the patient’s unconscious and resisting the temptation to provide solutions or totalising interpretations. Both approaches warn against the dangers of reducing the Other to the Same—the Levinasian notion of imposing one’s framework onto another.

The Role of the Therapist

Levinas, via Orange, sees the therapist as a witness to suffering, while Lacan envisions the analyst as a guardian of the patient’s access to their unconscious desire. This difference highlights a tension: Orange emphasises relational attunement, while Lacan stresses the importance of maintaining a certain distance to avoid collusion with the patient’s demand for reassurance.

Non-Knowing and Humility

Both Orange and Lacan advocate for humility in the therapist. Orange draws on Levinas’s critique of mastery, urging therapists to approach their patients without the pretense of full understanding. Lacan, similarly, emphasises the analyst’s position as a “subject supposed to know,” underscoring that this supposed knowledge is a function of transference, not reality.

A Potential Critique. Lacan and the Ethics of Desire

One possible critique from a Lacanian perspective is that Orange’s Levinasian ethics risks prioritising the patient’s demands at the expense of their desire. Lacan would caution against responding too readily to the Other’s call, as this can lead to reinforcing symptomatic structures or perpetuating dependency. Instead, the analyst must facilitate the patient’s encounter with their own unconscious, even when this encounter is painful or disruptive.

At the same time, Orange’s emphasis on relational attunement can enrich Lacanian practice, which is sometimes critiqued as overly abstract or disengaged. By integrating Levinasian ethics, Lacanians might develop a greater sensitivity to the relational and embodied aspects of the therapeutic encounter.

Toward an Ethical Psychoanalysis

Donna Orange’s Levinasian ethics challenges psychotherapists to embrace vulnerability, humility, and infinite responsibility. Lacanian psychoanalysis, with its focus on desire and the unconscious, adds a crucial dimension to this ethical vision, emphasising the importance of allowing the patient’s singular truth to emerge. Together, these perspectives invite us to reimagine psychotherapy not only as a clinical practice but as a profound ethical encounter that navigates the complexities of self and Other.

By weaving together Levinas, Orange, and Lacan, we can cultivate a psychoanalytic practice that is both ethically rigorous and deeply attuned to the intricacies of human subjectivity.