Ms Ann Shenfield

Philosophy & Vision

As an analyst my position is to enable a person to recognise their responsibility and to come to understand what is unique about themselves.
In the psychoanalytic space a person is encouraged to truly speak their mind, accessing the unconscious through free association. When we ask ourselves questions like 'I don’t know why I did that?' Or if we act against our own interests, psychoanalysis offers a way to interrogate ourselves with a view to working out what is really at play. By attuning ourselves to our inner dialogue, the analytic process can be transformative.
Lacan considered a person’s life to be aligned with poetry, that words have significance and primacy, in ways that a person is often unaware of and can be unknowingly subject to.

Background

I come to practise as a psychoanalyst with a background in the creative arts, and I bring that creativity to my psychotherapeutic work. My focus is on understanding the unconscious in its various guises.

Services

Therapy Approach

The only rule in the psychoanalytic space is to speak in an uncensored way, where the usual repressions are absent, this is unlike an ordinary conversation since it can bring forth unconscious conflicts. It may, at times, be challenging but psychoanalysis can lead to a more grounded sense of who we are, underneath our self-deceptions and impositions. By addressing the unconscious and looking at patterns of repeated behaviour, psychoanalysis interprets the past as it impacts on the present. It also works to enable a person to perceive what is, and isn’t, their responsibility and offers insight into how to deal with symptoms, not necessarily by curing them, but by treating them in a way that means they become more tolerable.