Individual psychotherapy is addressed to adults who experience psychological distress, which may manifest in different and shifting ways. Coming to therapy is often linked to the need for relief from a persistent tension, from recurring impasses, or from experiences that have shaken the way one previously understood oneself, others, and one’s life. This need for relief is understandable and is taken seriously. The therapeutic work, however, is not limited to managing or eliminating symptoms, nor is it organised around predefined goals or techniques. The symptom is not approached as something foreign that must simply be removed, but as something that carries significance for the person and is connected to the way one speaks, desires, and relates.

 

Within the therapeutic encounter, one is encouraged to speak about what preoccupies, troubles, or immobilises— even when this appears in the form of repetition, impasse, or difficulty in being clearly articulated. The work begins from speech, not as a mere recounting of events, but as a space in which something of one’s position in relation to what is taking place may come into view.

 

The therapist does not instruct, direct, or promote a “correct” stance or behaviour. Listening is careful and attentive to what is said as well as to how it is said, and through questioning, conditions are created in which a different relation may emerge to the symptom, to desire, and to internal conflict. Individual psychotherapy does not promise an ideal state of psychic balance, nor a definitive resolution of life’s impasses. It may, however, open the possibility of a shift in the relation to what causes distress, of taking up the singularity of desire, and of finding a personal way of bearing uncertainty, vulnerability, and the contradictions that accompany human existence.