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CBT works primarily with thoughts and behaviours in the present — it is a structured, often shorter-term approach that tends to be effective for specific symptoms like anxiety and phobia. Psychodynamic therapy works differently: it explores causation rather than symptom management, and it tends to produce changes that go deeper and last longer, because it addresses the underlying relational and psychological patterns rather than the surface difficulties they produce.

Neither approach is universally better. For some people and some difficulties, CBT is exactly right. For others — particularly those who have found that understanding their patterns doesn't change them, or who have already done CBT and found it insufficient — psychodynamic work offers something different.

Relational Integrity is the framework underpinning my clinical and writing work. It is built around six qualities — Symbolic Honesty, Emotional Responsibility, Narrative Integrity, Secure Ambivalence, Presence Without Rescue, and Symbolic Pacing — that describe what it takes to remain genuinely present in close relationships, including the therapeutic one.

It is not a method imposed on the clinical work. It is an attempt to name what I have been doing, and what I believe good relational therapy involves, with enough conceptual precision to be taught and critiqued.

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You probably don't. Readiness tends to develop during the early sessions rather than arriving fully formed before them. What matters more than readiness is a genuine willingness — to show up, to try to say what's actually there, to be patient with a process that doesn't always feel linear.

The desire to understand your own experience more clearly, even if that desire is mixed with significant ambivalence, is usually sufficient to begin.

There is no fixed endpoint. The work is open-ended, which means it continues until both you and I have a sense that what it was most necessary for is no longer dominant — that you have developed sufficient internal resources that the room is no longer as essential as it was.

For most people this means somewhere between one and several years of weekly work. Some people benefit from longer. A very few find that a shorter, more focused piece of work addresses what they needed. I try to be honest about this as it emerges, rather than setting an arbitrary endpoint at the beginning.

A first session is a conversation. There is no intake form, no formal assessment, no structured questionnaire. You speak about what brought you here, and I listen in a particular way — attentively to what you say, and to the texture of how you say it.

By the end, I will usually have some sense of whether I think I can be useful to you and why. And you will have some sense of whether the quality of attention in the room is something you might be able to work with.

The first consultation is free. It's a conversation to see whether this feels like the right fit — for both of us.

Yes. Couples work in my practice is psychodynamically-informed and relational rather than prescriptive — it is oriented toward understanding what is happening between you, including what is being communicated but not said, rather than providing communication techniques or homework.

The Love Dictionary emerged partly from this work: the observation that many difficulties between couples involve not a failure of communication but a genuine divergence in the interior meanings each person carries for the same words.

Sessions are between €90 and €160, depending on circumstance.

I offer a sliding scale for people for whom the standard fee represents a genuine and ongoing barrier. If you're in that position, I'd rather discuss it than have the question sit unspoken between us. It won't change the quality of the work.

Most health insurance policies in France do not reimburse psychotherapy with a psychothérapeute. If you hold a policy that includes psychological care, it's worth checking the terms. I'm happy to provide receipts in whatever format your insurer requires.

Yes. I see clients online throughout Europe and internationally. In my experience, online work is genuinely effective for this kind of therapy — the quality of attention and presence that the work requires translates well to video. It is a different physical experience, but not a lesser one.

For clients in Paris, I prefer in-person sessions where possible, particularly in the early phase of the work. But where in-person is impractical — whether due to distance, schedules, or other circumstances — online sessions are a full and proper alternative.

In France, the term psychiatre refers specifically to a medical doctor who has specialised in psychiatry and can prescribe medication. A psychologue holds a recognised psychology degree (minimum Bac+5) and is registered with the Agence Nationale du DPC. A psychothérapeute is a broader title, regulated since 2010, that requires demonstrated training in psychopathology.

I hold qualifications in psychology and psychodynamic psychotherapy across several European countries. My clinical training is rooted in contemporary relational psychoanalysis. I am happy to provide details of specific credentials on request.

Everything discussed in sessions is confidential. I don't share information about clients with third parties — not with family members, partners, employers, or insurers — without your explicit consent.

There are legal and ethical exceptions to this: specifically, situations involving serious risk of harm to you or to someone else, or where I am required by law to act. These are rare and clearly defined. If such a situation were ever to arise, I would discuss it with you directly before taking any action, wherever that is possible.

In France, psychologists and psychotherapists are bound by professional confidentiality obligations (secret professionnel). This is not simply good practice. It is a legal and ethical framework.

Your privacy matters to this work. It is one of the conditions that makes the work possible.

Then it's worth saying so. In the room, directly, to me.

This might feel uncomfortable — particularly if the worry is that you'll hurt my feelings, or that raising it will damage the relationship, or that you'll be told you're not engaging correctly. None of these is likely to happen. Therapists who can't hear that something isn't working are not doing the job.

There are several different things that can be happening when therapy feels stuck or wrong. Sometimes it is a sign that something important and difficult is being approached — that the work is, in fact, working, in ways that don't feel productive yet. Sometimes it reflects a mismatch in approach or temperament that is genuinely worth addressing. And sometimes the fit between therapist and client simply isn't right, and the most honest and useful thing to do is to acknowledge that and help you find something better.

I would rather have this conversation than have you quietly discontinue and carry a sense of failure about it. What feels like a problem in the therapy is often the most important material the therapy has.

This is one of the most common things people carry into first sessions, and it is worth addressing directly.

I am not going to judge you. Not because I'm constitutionally without opinions — I have them — but because judgement is not useful here, and because what people are most ashamed of is almost always the most ordinary and the most human thing about them. In twenty years of practice, I have not been shocked by anything a client has told me. I have been moved, troubled, saddened, sometimes surprised by the courage it took to say it. But not shocked.

What you are most reluctant to say is usually what most needs to be said. That's not a prescription to say it immediately. It takes what it takes. But the room is designed to hold it.

It might not be. That's an honest answer.

Previous therapy that didn't help is worth thinking about carefully, because the reasons vary and they matter. Sometimes the approach wasn't right for the kind of difficulty you were bringing — CBT, for instance, works well for specific symptoms but often doesn't reach the deeper relational patterns that psychodynamic work addresses. Sometimes the fit between therapist and client was poor, and nobody named it. Sometimes the timing wasn't right.

If you've had previous therapy that felt either too surface-level or too uncomfortable in the wrong ways, it's worth describing that in the first conversation. Not to compare or compete with your previous therapist, but because it's genuinely useful information — about what you need, what you're guarding against, and what might be different this time.

The fact that you're considering it again, having already tried it, tells me something about what you're looking for. That's usually a good starting point.

Yes, and I find it one of the most interesting dimensions of the work. I grew up in Greece and have lived in Paris for most of my adult life, working in three languages. I have a particular familiarity with the experience of being between cultures — between the language you think in and the language you live in, between who you were formed to be and who you've had to become.

Questions of identity, belonging, language, and the self that gets lost in translation are not peripheral to the clinical work. They are often its most alive territory.