Registered Psychotherapist
RP, BA, MA, PsyD
Psychoanalytic therapy, sometimes called psychodynamic therapy, is uniquely different from many other approaches. In psychoanalytic therapy we look at immediate issues, but the focus is on the deeper issues and on making the deeper change.
You may ask, “why does psychoanalytic therapy explore the underlying causes of immediate issues?”
Here is your answer with an example from my website: suppose you have a bad backache. You may alleviate the pain by taking painkillers, but you need to learn what motion or weight caused the pain and how it impacts your back, so the next time you are in the same situation, you will have a better chance of helping yourself avoid what causes you backaches. The same is true for therapy and the recurrent patterns that your psyche feels stuck in. This is the aim of psychoanalytic or psychodynamic therapy.
I would like to learn about you because you know your life story, all the joyful moments as well as the traumatic events. This is the material you bring to your sessions. I will help you, to the best of my ability, to gain some insight into how you have experienced these and how these have shaped you to become the person you are today. Together, we will bring heightened awareness to the way in which these experiences have created hurtful patterns and situations in your life.
Moreover, I want to hear about your relationships at work and at home, your childhood experiences, your worries, obsessions, and feelings of guilt and shame; I have a non-judgmental attitude, so you would not need to worry about being judged in psychoanalytic therapy sessions with me.
Finally, I have been in your shoes: as a requirement for my psychoanalytic training, I had to go through my personal analysis. Learning about myself has facilitated my therapeutic work; it also helps me to be in your shoes and feel what you may be going through during your therapy.
I am a psychotherapist and a musician. I come from a teaching background and have had a longstanding desire to learn about the human psyche. I wanted to know why people are the way they are, why they vary in their emotional responses, why they react differently toward the same experience, and why one person chooses a genre of music, special food, and a type of person to date while another person makes different choices.
Eventually, I decided to take the plunge, leave my teacher’s training and engineering degree behind and start my BA in applied psychology, followed by my MA in Clinical Mental Health Counselling, and along the way, I started my psychoanalytic training. I completed my doctoral studies in psychology (PsyD) wherein I did research on the impacts of music improvisation on the psyche.
I started offering video sessions long before the pandemic as I wanted to work with adults in near and remote locations. I am registered in Ontario and British Columbia.
If you would like to schedule an appointment with me, please email me at rhett.lawson.m@gmail.com
Depth psychology refers to all schools of psychoanalysis as well as Jungian psychology (analytical psychology). They all maintain that humans have a rich, varied psyche, and much of our mental life is out of direct conscious awareness. This is the dynamic unconscious (hence the name psychodynamic), and this dynamic unconscious impacts our lives.
For example, you might recognize the action of unconscious motivation in your life from patterns and repetitions you have noticed, such as dating a very similar kind of person repeatedly despite your intentions to choose otherwise, living out the same unsatisfying results.
I use techniques from various psychoanalytic schools and Jungian psychology. What it means for my psychotherapy practice is that I strongly believe humans are relational beings, and empathy and a secure non-judgmental human connection, be it with a parent, a partner, or a psychotherapist are healing factors.