Home visits
I come to you, within about twenty minutes of Ervy-le-Châtel. In English or in French.
There's no psychologist nearby in this corner of the Aube, and the public mental health centres aren't always easy to reach — long waiting lists, or a long drive, often both.
Coming to you answers that. It isn't a sideline I offer on request. It's how I work here.
How a visit goes
Monday to Friday, by appointment. I arrive at the agreed hour and we work for an hour. There's nothing to set up and nothing to prepare — somewhere to sit quietly is enough.
Only one thing matters: that we can talk without being interrupted.
Privacy in your own house
Your home isn't a consulting room, so we need a room where we can't be heard from next door, and an hour when nobody will come in. That's usually the real difficulty of working this way, and it's better sorted out before the first session than during it.
If your house doesn't lend itself to it, or if other people being there bothers you, say so. We'll find something else — a different hour, or online sessions if you're an adult.
What's said in the session stays between us. Psychologists in France are bound by professional secrecy, and it's one of the rules I hold to most firmly.
Children and teenagers
Children and teenagers are only ever seen in person, never on a screen. That's a decision about the work, not a matter of scheduling.
With a young child you don't always talk, and when you do, they can't always name what's wrong. The work goes through mediation instead: drawing, modelling clay, puzzles, board games, play with figures or animals depending on their age. None of that comes through a webcam.
Working in a child's own surroundings is often truer, too, than bringing them somewhere strange. They're at home, with their own things around them, and that changes what they'll show you.
What brings them: sleep trouble, difficulty with toilet training, fears, trouble at school, or trouble with other children — shyness, withdrawal, aggression. At the start it's the parents who help me understand what's going on. Then I explain to the child why I'm there and what my job is, so that the space becomes theirs.
With a teenager
Adolescence is a construction site. Feelings run close to the surface and aren't always identifiable, and the request usually comes from someone else — parents, school, the people around them. But a teenager has to agree to the work. You can't make somebody do this.
Once they've agreed, the space is theirs, and what they say in it doesn't travel back to their parents. At the first appointment, in front of everyone, I set out the one exception: if I see danger, or if something genuinely has to be passed on, I won't do it behind their back. We talk about it together first, and decide together what gets said.
It's that frame — stated plainly and then kept — that makes the work possible.
Adults
Home visits are also for adults who can't get out: health, mobility, no car. And for those where leaving the house is itself part of the problem.
If you can stay home and would rather not have anyone in it, online sessions cost less and take the organising out of it.
Where I travel
About twenty minutes' drive around Ervy-le-Châtel, which covers the south-west of the Aube and part of the north of the Yonne: Auxon, Chaource, Chamoy, Saint-Phal, Villeneuve-au-Chemin, Neuvy-Sautour, Flogny-la-Chapelle and the villages between them. The full list is on the French page.
Travel is included in the fee — there's no mileage charge, wherever you are in that area. If your village isn't on the list but looks close, ask me. The boundary is a rough one.
Fees
Home sessions always run a full hour — the shorter 45-minute format exists online only. You pay afterwards, by bank transfer, in cash or by cheque. Full fees and insurance.
Checking that I come as far as you
Tell me which village you're in. I'll answer straight away, and say so plainly if it's too far.