Listening To You - Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in North West London
  • Welcome
  • Listening
  • Psychoanalysis
  • The Therapist
  • Beginning therapy
  • Code Of Practice
  • Contact Details
  • Links
  • A Psychoanalyst's Blog

What's the difference, then?

2/3/2010

 
Compliments of Ace Clip Art
This is a question I often get from people when they first meet me. "You are a psychoanalyst", they say. "Right..." And then, after a moment of hesitation: "Excuse my ignorance, but I am always confused. A psychoanalyst. What does it mean? You are a doctor, aren't you? Are you a psychiatrist? A psychologist? No? So, what are you? What's the difference?"

You see, all those Greek words, made up by people who were not Greeks at a time when creating "new" Greek words was fashionable, are more or less opaque for whomever does not have much familiarity with the so called Psi world. They are compound terms, sharing the first bit, "psych-" (which comes from Psyche, i.e. Soul.)

So, we have:

  • Psychiatrist < Psychiatry < psyche + iatreia, ‘cure’.
  • Psychologist < Psychology < psyche + logos, 'discourse, study'
  • Psychotherapist < Psychotherapy < psyche + therapeia, 'nursing, cure'
  • Psychoanalyst < Psychoanalysis < psyche + analysis, 'separation into components, close examination'

All this is very interesting, but did not answer the question. What's the difference?


Read More

Nothing to cure

17/9/2009

 
People ask me sometimes what I do for a living, and when I tell them, almost invariably I am met with a look of understanding and compassion. I know what this look says. It says: “Poor you, for having to have such a regular contact with those mentally ill people.”

In the early days I tried to challenge this view. (I don’t anymore).

I would explain that people who go to a psychotherapist or a psychoanalyst are not necessarily mentally ill. I would admit that some of them might be, of course, but even they, I would stress, do not go to the therapist because of their illness. They might think so, but what they really do is go to the therapist because they need help and hopefully the therapist can provide this.

This very simple truth was incomprehensible to many of my interlocutors –and, I would expect, to many of the readers of this blog. I can almost hear, loud, the objections: “If you cannot cure people, why do you invite them to come to you? Is this a joke or something?”

Read More

    About

    This is the blog of
    Christos Tombras
    a psychoanalyst practising
    in North West London.

    For more information,
    please click here.

    For a list of all posts,
    please click here.

    Archives

    January 2020
    May 2019
    March 2016
    October 2014
    April 2014
    May 2013
    October 2012
    February 2012
    July 2011
    June 2011
    February 2011
    September 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009


    RSS Feed


    Categories

    All
    Body Mind Dichotomy
    Books
    Brain Initiative
    Cfar
    Descartes
    Discourse Ontology
    Dsm
    Event
    Evidence
    Falsification Criterion
    Films
    Free Will
    Hard Sciences
    Health Professions Council
    History
    Immanuel Kant
    Jacques Lacan
    Jouissance
    Lanzmann
    Lecture
    Martin Heidegger
    Measuring Effectiveness
    Medical Model
    Mental Illness
    Nimh
    Oedipus Complex
    Phantasy
    Psychoanalysis
    Psychosis
    Randomized Control Trials
    Reality
    Regulation Of Psychotherapy
    Resistance
    Reviews
    Scientific Research
    Sexuality
    Shoah
    Sigmund Freud
    Signifier
    Stigma
    Symptoms
    Teaching
    Therapy
    The Unconscious
    Truth
    Ukcp


Listening To You • An Invitation to Talk • Lacanian Psychoanalysis • London     © 2009 - 2021