How I work

An integrative practice

My training and the places I've worked have left me thinking about psychology through several traditions at once. That's what integrative means in practice: I take the person as a whole, psychological, biological, social and environmental, rather than as a case for one method.

I draw on psychoanalytic and psychodynamic thinking, on humanistic theory, on attachment theory, on psychosomatics, and on what neuroscience has to say. Between them they let me follow how a mind is working, as close as I can get to what the person in front of me actually needs.

The practical consequence is simple: you don't have to fit a method. Fitting is my job.

What the work rests on

On the helping relationship, on treating you as one person rather than a category, and on making it possible for you to be free in the room — to say, think and feel what you like, when much of life doesn't allow that.

It runs on close listening, without judgement, with warmth but also with exchange. I talk. I ask questions, and I answer them. The point is that you come to understand yourself, see your situation clearly, and find the solutions that suit you. That possibilities open where they looked shut. That what's in your way changes. That you get out of the loops we shut ourselves into, and build a life that looks like you and that you'd choose again.

Where I trained, and where I've worked

A master's in clinical psychology and psychopathology, which is the degree that carries the protected French title of psychologue clinicienne et psychothérapeute, followed by a research master's in development, cognition and clinical psychology. Both at the University of Burgundy.

Since then: hospital departments — genetics, oncology, psychiatry — a public community mental health centre, an association providing access to care, and private practice since 2014. Adults, teenagers and children, in individual therapy.

At the association I worked with people in precarious circumstances or returning to work, and with families. I've also worked alongside a dermatology practice on cases with a psychosomatic dimension.

My research was on patients with malignant melanoma, on risk-taking behaviour, and on families of children born with recurrent chromosomal anomalies.

Career guidance has been part of it too: skills assessments, return-to-work support, helping people change direction. It's the same profession from another angle — working out where somebody stands and what they want to do next.

I've trained professionals in child development and in safeguarding, taught in preparatory classes for the French paramedical and social-work entrance exams, and coached candidates at a distance for speech therapy exams.

I work in English and in French, and have seen people living far from home since 2018. I also see clients through teleconsultation platforms and through employee assistance programmes.

An interview I gave — in French.

Why I do this work

Of all the disciplines, psychology is the one that comes closest to what a person actually is. People are complicated and no two are alike, and that has held my attention for as long as I can remember.

Seeing a psychologist isn't just seeing a professional who listens while you talk. It's an exchange in which you get to be yourself, honestly, without being judged for it. In that odd situation, where time is held still for a while, you can look back at what happened, see the present more accurately, and imagine what comes next in a different shape.

Once you know who you are, you can use what you have, and become — or go back to being — yourself.

“A human encounter is something you live, not something you read about.”