My approach is pluralistic in its theoretical origins and individual-centred in its clinical practice. My university and clinical training allows me to draw on a combination of three very important approaches: systemic psychotherapy, Lacanian psychoanalysis and philosophy in so far as the latter relates to the human being and the key questions that concern him/her.

From the Systemic approach I mainly hold to the idea that understanding anxiety, a panic attack or another symptom cannot be addressed if we detach or isolate it from the life circumstances and set of relationships of the person suffering from that symptom. The part is always best illuminated if it is related to the whole in which it exists and functions. The symptom is always a link in a chain of interdependent events. For example, to understand an addiction it is useful to study how the symptom is related not exclusively to the individual himself but to the system of interdependent relationships (family, work, love, etc.) that largely determine his life.

From Lacanian psychoanalysis I mainly hold to the idea that the search for healing always occurs at the moment when the usual way in which one derives satisfaction in one’s life breaks down or is driven to a dead end. What sends someone to a psychotherapist is a sudden shrinking of the avenues and methods of satisfaction, which makes the person suddenly feel completely helpless. I further hold the idea that the person seeking psychotherapy is seeking to talk about something they are at least partially unaware of, something they doubt, fear, loathe, love, admire. He seeks to emphasize what in his personal history makes him suffer and about which he cannot exactly talk to those close to him. Here, the role of the analyst is to offer the analysand the possibility of a shift, a new approach to things, a new way of being satisfied not by denying but by coming to terms with his particular symptom. More precisely, the role of the analyst is to clarify and mobilize the analysand’s desire, since “desire is a remedy for anxiety”. Impulse is not to deaden or dry up desire but instead to revitalize it.

From Philosophy I hold mainly the idea that human happiness is not a utopia, nor is it synonymous with self-limitation and restraint. I become happy not because I sacrifice my desire on the altar of duty but because I learn to desire by constantly expanding the boundaries of my being. Happiness is not the renunciation of what I am, the adoption of a nature that I do not have and will never acquire, but the utilization and expression to the fullest extent of what I am and what I can actually become.

The preceding approaches thus allow me to personalize my analytical method each time, placing at its heart the ineradicable particularity of the analysand, whose personal history cannot be explained by reference only to universal laws of human behaviour. It is the personal symptom of each individual that determines the development of the therapeutic process each time, without it ‘drowning’ the individuality of the analysand by squeezing it into the somewhat crude classifications of prefabricated protocols. The main weakness of these protocols is that they apply to everyone without exception. This is why they are unsuitable for psychotherapy: the role of the latter is to highlight the exception that each analysand represents, to understand it and to build happiness not against it but on it.

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Maro Bellou

Maro Bellou

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