THE LONDON CLINIC OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

Clinical Director: Ms Penelope Crick

Clinic Administrator: Ms Trudy
   Turmer

   Byron House
   112A, Shirland Road
   London W9 2EQ

   Tel  0207 563 5002
   Fax 0207 563 5003
   clinic@iopa.org.uk 

The London Clinic of Psychoanalysis offers a Consultation Service for anyone who may be interested to have a consultation with a qualified and experienced psychoanalyst. Recommendations for further treatment may include a reduced-fee psychoanalysis through the Clinic or a referral through the Referrals Service. The Clinic has about 100 patients in treatment. The Child and Adolescent Department provides assessment and treatment for those between 2 and 17 years.


Psychoanalysis is a specific approach to the understanding of mental functioning and the treatment of mental distress. Psychoanalysis recognises that we have impulses, perceptions and thoughts, which we are not consciously aware of, and that conflicts in these unconscious aspects of our minds can give rise to disturbance and symptoms. Treatment aims to help an individual through careful listening to what they have to say and then offering an understanding for consideration by the patient.

A consultation with a psychoanalyst can help an individual to think about what is going on in their life, perhaps at a time of difficulty. A psychoanalytic consultation may be helpful in its own right, or it may result in a decision to go into analysis or analytic psychotherapy.

Psychoanalysis is not superficial or just at the level of intellectual problem solving. It involves patient and analyst meeting five, or sometimes four, times a week for sessions of fifty minutes, over probably two or more years.

Such frequency is not for everyone and psychoanalytic psychotherapy of fewer sessions a week can be more suitable for some people.

The London Clinic of Psychoanalysis offers a full psychoanalytic consultation for anyone who would like to have the chance to think about whether this form of treatment is right for them.

For current list of Clinic staff, click here




Consultation Service

Consultations are all with psychoanalysts who are Members or Fellows of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council. Most of the consultants also hold qualifications in psychiatry, clinical psychology or social work and many also hold senior positions in the NHS.

Consultations take place either at the Clinic in Maida Vale or at consultants’ private consulting rooms in and around London. We are also able to offer some consultations and referrals to psychoanalysts in other parts of the UK.

Consultants will make a careful assessment over one or more meetings of what would be the most suitable recommendation and next step. This may be to the Clinic low-fee scheme or to the Clinic referral service.

If you would like to have a Clinic Consultation, please contact the Clinic. It would be helpful if you would briefly outline your reasons for looking for help now and what help, if any, you have had in the past.



Consultation Fees
The full fee for a Clinic Consultation is £95 for a first appointment and £50 for subsequent meetings.

For those on benefits or low income, we are able to reduce the full fee to £30 for a first appointment and £20 for subsequent meetings.

Low-fee scheme

The London Clinic of Psychoanalysis has a number of places each year for full, five times weekly psychoanalysis for people for whom this would be the treatment of choice but who cannot afford full fees. Recommendations are considered by the Clinic and if a suitable place is likely to become available within a reasonable period of time, applicants can go onto our waiting list. We try not to keep people waiting for more than six months. These places are offered by members of the Clinic staff, many of whom are in the final stages of their training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Low-Fee Psychoanalysis
Fees are according to the patient’s means, usually with a minimum of £5 per session, for five times weekly treatment for a minimum of two years. No one is excluded on financial grounds and lower fees can be negotiated at the Clinical Director’s discretion.

Referral Service
We also have a referral service so that if a Clinic Consultant has recommended psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic therapy, we can put you in touch with a fully qualified psychoanalyst or psychoanalytic psychotherapist with a suitable treatment vacancy. All clinicians in our referral service are registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council.

Fees for Psychoanalysis or Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy via the Referral Service
Fees are negotiated with the psychoanalyst to whom you are referred but are usually in the range £35 to £60, often depending on the frequency of sessions.




Child & Adolescent Services

For information about our Clinic services for children and adolescents, please contact the Director for Child and Adolescent Services, Dr. Maxim de Sauma, via the same contact detail as above.

Contact

To arrange a consultation or for any enquiries about the Clinic services, please contact the Clinical Director Ms Penelope Crick or the Clinic Administrator Ms Trudy Turmer. It would be helpful if you could give your postal address so that we may send you relevant information.

email: clinic@iopa.org.uk 

telephone: 020 7563 5002

Concerns and Complaints

Anyone who has received or is receiving treatment or a consultation through the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis is welcome to get in touch to raise concerns or make a complaint if need be.

You should, wherever possible, talk about this to the analyst concerned in the first instance.

If a satisfactory resolution cannot be reached in this way, you can speak to the Clinical Director (Penelope Crick clinic@iopa.org.uk Tel: 020 7563 5002)

All Clinic staff are bound by the Fitness to Practice requirements, code of ethics and complaints procedures of the British Psychoanalytical Council (BPC) and any complaint and concern can also go directly to that organisation (www.psychoanalytic-council.org   Tel: 020 7267 3626)

For more information:

For general enquiries about psychoanalysis, events and lectures:

Institute of Psychoanalysis
112a Shirland Road, London W9 2EQ
020 7563 5000
www.psychoanalysis.org.uk

For information about registration and other possibilities for finding psychoanalytical psychotherapists:

British Psychoanalytic Council
West Hill House, Swains Lane,
London N6 6QS
020 7267 3626
http://www.bcp.org.uk/
 

Useful publications

'A short introduction to psychoanalysis' by Jane Milton, Caroline Polmear and Julia Fabricius, Sage 2004.

‘Making sense of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy’ a MIND publication.
www.MIND.org.uk
0845 766 0163

What is Psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis is the most intensive form of the talking therapy, devised by Sigmund Freud one hundred years ago, but developed continuously and radically since then. Patients attend five fifty minute sessions weekly, usually for several years, working with their psychoanalyst to examine and to explore unconscious conflicts of feeling, emotion and phantasy that are at the root of their symptoms and the problems that are troubling them.

Psychoanalytic theory suggests that it is by no means only genetic and constitutional factors that make up the personality. Other central influences include the experience of birth, of the early relationships with parents, of sexuality, of love and hate, of loss and death. These crucial experiences, worked over and lived out in the core relationships of the family, lay down patterns in the mind of feeling, phantasy and relationship - patterns which provide unconscious templates, or models of relationships. Such unconscious versions of relationships are often at the root of the problems which lead people to seek help.

The regular sessions of psychoanalysis provide a setting within which these unconscious patterns can be brought into awareness and worked on with a view to change. The relationship with the analyst is influenced inevitably and powerfully by the patient’s unconscious ways of behaving and itself becomes a central area of study, enabling light to be thrown on the patient’s patterns of relationship in the immediacy of the sessions.

The work of psychoanalysis is long and arduous, for both patient and analyst. When successful, however, psychoanalysis can be a unique and profound experience that often leads to long-term development in close relationships, work and creativity. Success depends on both analyst and patient and on the quality of their joint work.

Clinical Examples

John: “Depression and “Relationship Problems”

John came to analysis at 28, having been unable to work for five years since leaving college. He was still living at home, severely depressed and plagued by feelings of persecution. He was compelled to walk on the inside of the pavement, as he had the obsessive idea that someone might push him onto the
road. He was sometimes afraid that his food would
be poisoned, or that the air he breathed might contain noxious substances.
He spent much of his time at home, playing computer games, or went out as far as a local cafe to sit and read.
His childhood had been marked by parental disturbance including violence. Several years of five times weekly psychoanalysis enabled him slowly to emerge into the world. He trained and
became successful in a profession where he now makes an important social contribution. He began to make friends, to begin to have a more satisfying sexual life, and to buy his own home.



Mary: “Depression, Suicidal Feelings”

Ms. B. came to analysis with chronic severe depression in her early thirties. She had not found that once weekly psychotherapy helped her very much. She revealed early in the analysis that she had made detailed suicidal plans and had often been at the point of carrying them out. She was working at a level far below her capacity, and was very restricted in her emotional and sexual life. Analysis enabled her to move on in her career, to marry and have children. Her work and social world widened out considerably. Her depressive symptoms recur in mild form at times, but she is able to weather them by herself.

Rashid “School failure and Delinquency”

Rashid’s mother suffered from a serious mental illness and for long periods of his childhood she was unable to look after him. By the age of seventeen, in the care of the local authority, Rashid had failed at school and was starting to become involved in petty criminal activity. His social worker remained convinced that with sufficient help, Rashid could yet make a success of things. Accordingly she approached the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis and the Clinic agreed to fund his psychoanalysis.

Rashid responded well to the supportive and reliable structure provided by the psychoanalytic setting. Perhaps for the first time he had someone to listen and really try to think with him. His concentration improved and he began a college course. At the same time he had to negotiate the move from the children’s home where he lived to a more independent life style.

His anger and frustration with all those who tried and failed to help him gave way to a profound sadness as he came to recognise the limitations of his much-loved mother, and how little support she had in fact received. Rashid needed the support of his psychoanalyst and social worker during this difficult time. As he gradually became less depressed, Rashid began to take an interest in his own culture.  He left the analysis after three years to continue his studies in another city.