Psychotherapy

My approach is pluralistic in its theoretical foundations while remaining firmly centered on the needs and unique characteristics of each individual in therapy. My academic and clinical training enables me to integrate three major fields—Psychology, Medicine, and Philosophy—each of which, in its own way, addresses the human condition and the fundamental questions that concern human life.

Within Psychology, my work is primarily informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis and Systemic psychotherapy. From Lacanian psychoanalysis, I retain the idea that the search for therapy often arises at the moment when a person’s usual way of finding satisfaction in life collapses or reaches an impasse. What brings someone to a psychologist or psychotherapist is often a sudden narrowing of the paths through which satisfaction had previously been experienced, leaving the individual feeling unexpectedly powerless.

At the same time, the person seeking psychotherapy is attempting to speak about something that they only partly understand—something about which they may feel doubt, fear, aversion, love, or admiration. They seek to express what, within their personal history, causes them suffering and what they may find difficult to articulate even to those closest to them. In this context, the role of the analyst is to offer a certain deciphering of the unconscious, while opening the possibility of a shift: a new way of approaching things and a new way of finding satisfaction in life—not by denying one’s particular symptom, but by learning to work with it. More precisely, the analyst’s role is to clarify and mobilize the analysand’s desire, since, in psychoanalytic terms, desire can function as a remedy for anxiety. Healing, therefore, does not lie in suppressing or extinguishing desire, but rather in rekindling it.

From the Systemic approach, I retain the idea that anxiety, panic attacks, or other symptoms cannot be properly understood if they are isolated from the individual’s life circumstances and relational environment. A symptom can only be fully understood when it is considered within the broader context in which it emerges. In this sense, a symptom is always part of a chain of interdependent events. For example, in order to understand an addiction—whether related to alcohol, food, gambling, or other behaviors—it is often helpful to explore how this symptom relates not only to the individual but also to the network of relationships that shape their life, including family, professional, and intimate relationships. Through this process, the individual may gain a deeper understanding of their position within the relational systems to which they belong.

From Medicine—particularly the field of psychoneuroimmunology, an important and rapidly developing area of research—I draw on the idea of moving beyond the traditional Cartesian separation between mind and body. This perspective supports a more holistic understanding of illness. Psychoneuroimmunological research seeks to deepen our understanding of stress by examining processes that are simultaneously psychological and biological. In doing so, it sheds light on the role that emotions and emotional experiences may play in biological functioning, as well as in the onset and progression of illness.

From Philosophy, I retain the idea that human happiness is neither a utopia nor synonymous with self-denial or restraint. Happiness does not arise from sacrificing desire in the name of duty, but from learning how to desire while continually expanding the possibilities of one’s own existence. Happiness is not the renunciation of who we are, nor the persistent pursuit of a nature we do not possess and will never acquire. Rather, it lies in developing and expressing, as fully as possible, what we truly are and what we are genuinely capable of becoming. These perspectives allow me to adapt my analytic method to each individual, placing the person and their singular history at the center of the therapeutic process. A person’s life story cannot be explained solely through universal laws of human behavior. Each individual symptom shapes the course of therapy in its own way, and the therapeutic process should not suppress this uniqueness by forcing it into rigid, pre-established protocols. The fundamental limitation of such protocols is precisely that they apply to everyone in the same way. For this reason, they are often inadequate for psychotherapy. The task of psychotherapy is instead to bring forward the uniqueness that each person represents, to understand it, and ultimately to help build a sense of happiness not in opposition to it, but upon it.