In-depth work on what, in you, speaks beyond what you already know
Psychoanalysis was born a little over a century ago, in the consulting room of a Viennese physician who began listening to his patients in a different way. What Sigmund Freud discovered — and what his successors have continued to explore in a multiplicity of directions — is that within each of us there exists a speech that cannot be grasped by consciousness alone. A speech that reveals itself in dreams, slips of the tongue, parapraxes, and also in the repetitions that structure a life without one having chosen them. Psychoanalytic work consists in giving this speech a place, and a time.
Psychoanalysis is distinguished from most other forms of psychotherapy by three traits that are inseparable: a high frequency of sessions (most often three to five per week), the use of the couch, and a generally long duration. It is not that psychoanalysis « does more » of what other approaches do; rather, it opens a different kind of space, one in which the work of the unconscious can unfold with a particular depth.
People come to analysis for a variety of reasons, which are not always easy to articulate at the outset. Some arrive with a precise suffering — an anxiety that will not let go, a depression that returns, a relational difficulty that repeats. Others sense that something in their lives is escaping them, or replaying itself, without their knowing why. Others still — sometimes themselves clinically or academically trained — come out of concern for their own psyche, with no particular symptom to present. All of these starting points are legitimate.
Several psychoanalytic traditions are represented at Regroupement Psychologues Montréal. This plurality is, in our view, an important richness.
The tradition issuing directly from Freud, as it is transmitted today at the Société psychanalytique de Montréal (SPM) and in societies affiliated with the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), emphasises the development of the psyche, the role of early relationships, the elaboration of transference and countertransference, and the patient working-through of psychic conflict within the analytic treatment.
The Lacanian tradition, represented in Montreal by NLS-Québec (linked to the New Lacanian School and, more broadly, to the École de la Cause freudienne), emphasises the structuring role of language in the psyche, desire as it is inscribed in speech, and the way in which the analysand can orient him- or herself in existence on the basis of what is discovered in the analysis.
The Canadian Psychoanalytic Society (CPS), whose Quebec English Branch is active in Montreal, also extends the Freudian tradition in connection with the IPA, with its own clinical and theoretical accents.
These traditions each have their own lexicon, their reference texts, and their clinical sensibilities. They share what is essential: taking the unconscious seriously, respecting the analysand's speech, and the conviction that prolonged work upon oneself can transform the way one inhabits one's life.
Psychologist, invited member psychoanalyst of the Société psychanalytique de Montréal. Dr Hashemian receives patients in analysis in the classical sense of the term — several sessions a week, the couch — and also works in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. He practises in English and Farsi.
Psychologist, in analytic training at the Quebec English Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. Mme Atefi receives patients in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in English and Farsi.
Psychologist, in analytic training at the Quebec English Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. Dre Cediel receives patients in psychoanalytic psychotherapy primarily in English and Spanish, and on a more occasional basis in French.
Psychologist, director of the Regroupement, in dual analytic training: at the Société psychanalytique de Montréal and in the clinical study programme of NLS-Québec beginning in September 2026. He receives patients in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in French and English.
Psychologist, with two years completed in the clinical study programme of NLS-Québec. Dre Perez holds a doctorate in psychology earned through an academic path in Brazil, doctoral internships in France and Belgium, and two postdoctoral fellowships in Quebec. She receives patients in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Portuguese and French.
A note for the reader: only work conducted with several sessions a week and with the use of the couch, by an analyst recognised by his or her training society, can properly be called psychoanalysis in the strict sense. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy — conducted by a clinician trained or in training in psychoanalysis, but at a lesser frequency — is work that is close in its orientation, distinct in its dispositif, and which we discuss further on this page.
The couch is the most visible element of the analytic treatment, and the one that raises the most questions among those who have never experienced an analysis. Far from being a folkloric vestige, it has a precise function.
Lying down, with the gaze turned towards the ceiling or a wall, the analysand no longer has to contend with the analyst's face — its expressions, its supposed approvals, its imagined frowns. This visual absence of the other allows speech to unfold more freely. One can say things one would not say face to face. One can follow an association to its end, without censoring oneself to spare the listener. One can, above all, let oneself be surprised by what comes out of oneself.
The analyst, for his or her part, is freed from the necessity of holding a face, which makes possible a different kind of listening — an attention that would not be available if one had, in addition, to control what one allows to show.
This arrangement, which can seem strange to those who have not lived it, becomes natural for most analysands quite quickly. Many even describe, after a few months, that they could no longer imagine working in any other way.
The high frequency — three, four, sometimes five sessions per week — is what distinguishes psychoanalysis from most other forms of psychotherapeutic work. This frequency is neither an institutional caprice nor an unreasonable demand. It has a precise logic.
When working at a frequency of once per week, the material of a session — a dream, an association, an affect that has surfaced — has time to fade, to be domesticated, to be rationalised before the following session. Daily life, with its demands, comes to cover over what had begun to open. With several sessions per week, this work of covering-over does not have time to fully take place. The unconscious remains closer to the surface; associations unfold more freely; the transference can develop in a way that is not possible at lesser frequencies.
This frequency is not asked of everyone, and it is not imposed abruptly. It is usually considered after a preliminary period of meetings, when the analyst and the patient agree to engage in analytic work in the strict sense. Many begin with one or two sessions per week and increase progressively, as the work calls for it.
An analysis takes time. This may be difficult to hear in a world that values rapid solutions; we prefer to be honest about it from the start. An analysis, in the strict sense, usually lasts several years.
This duration is not a defect of the dispositif, nor a sign that « it is not working quickly ». It is the direct consequence of what is being undertaken. The psychic modes that structure a life — ways of loving, of suffering, of desiring, of positioning oneself in relation to the other — are deeply anchored. They do not change in a quarter of a year.
Let us also remember that an analysis is not measured in years spent, but in transformations lived. These transformations often inscribe themselves durably, well beyond the end of treatment. Contemporary research, increasingly interested in what happens after the end of an analysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, observes with remarkable consistency that the benefits continue to deploy in the months and years that follow. This is not a placebo effect that fades; it is, on the contrary, work that continues to bear fruit long after the last session.
Becoming a psychoanalyst is not simply a professional specialisation. It is a long, exacting path that mobilises the person as a whole. In most recognised psychoanalytic societies — the Société psychanalytique de Montréal, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, NLS-Québec, and their international equivalents — training comprises three inseparable axes.
A rigorous theoretical instruction, extending over several years, covering the founding texts of Freud as well as the later developments specific to each tradition.
A thorough personal analysis. No analyst proposes to patients what he or she has not experienced firsthand. Personal analysis, conducted with an analyst recognised by the training society, is an absolute requirement — not a useful supplement.
Sustained clinical supervision (also called « control »), in which the candidate regularly presents clinical work with his or her own patients to a more experienced analyst, who helps the candidate hear what he or she would not have heard alone.
This path typically extends over ten to fifteen years. It does not make of the analyst a sage; it makes of the analyst someone who has worked upon him- or herself to the point of being able, in turn, to accompany this work in others.
It is in this spirit that the clinicians of the Regroupement engaged in analytic training actively pursue the three axes — instruction, personal analysis, supervision — throughout their training.
It would be imprudent to promise specific outcomes. But certain things tend to emerge from an analysis carried through to its term.
A freer relation to one's own desire — the capacity to recognise what one truly wants, distinct from what one thinks one ought to want.
A durable diminution of symptomatic suffering, not because the symptoms would have been combated, but because they would have ceased to be necessary.
A different way of inhabiting one's relationships — less encumbered by repetition, more available to encounter.
The sense of being the author of one's own life, and no longer its spectator or its victim.
A certain peace with what, in existence, cannot be changed.
These are not promises. They are what clinical experience, and the testimony of analysands, suggest.
This question does not receive a simple answer, and it is never settled before the preliminary meetings. An analysis demands a certain commitment — of time, of means, of psychic availability. But it does not demand that one be already « ready » in the sense one sometimes hears. Many analysands begin in a state of disorientation, or urgency, or simple curiosity; the work builds itself afterwards. The first preliminary meetings serve precisely to see together whether psychoanalysis is the right tool for you, at this moment of your life.
The distinction is one of degree and dispositif rather than of nature. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy shares the fundamental orientation of psychoanalysis — taking the unconscious seriously, attentive listening, the importance of transference — but it usually unfolds at a lesser frequency (one or two sessions per week), face to face, and over a generally shorter duration. It is substantial work, which brings much. It simply does not descend to the same depths as what an analysis in the strict sense allows. Our page on psychodynamic psychotherapy elaborates on these distinctions.
Fees are discussed directly with your analyst, during the preliminary meetings. Psychoanalysts adjust their fees to the means of their analysands — a treatment with several sessions a week represents a serious financial commitment, and it is important that it be sustainable over time. For analysands with private insurance covering psychological services, a portion of the sessions is generally reimbursed according to the terms of the contract.
The first meeting — and those that follow in the phase of preliminary interviews — is a moment of mutual listening. You speak of what brings you, of what concerns you, of what you expect. The analyst listens, sometimes asks questions, sometimes offers observations. No decision is taken in haste. This preliminary phase generally extends over several meetings, sometimes several weeks, and allows each — you and the analyst — to form a more accurate sense of what can be undertaken together.
Yes, this is a common path. Many analysands begin with psychoanalytic psychotherapy at one or two sessions per week, and it is in the work itself that the need to go further — and the possibility of going further — emerges. The transition to an analysis in the strict sense then takes place naturally, in agreement with the analyst, when the work calls for it.
Yes. No one is ever held in analysis against their will. But the ending of an analysis deserves, at the very least, to be spoken in analysis — and it is often there that unexpected things reveal themselves, modifying the decision itself. The end of an analysis, when it is constructed, is itself a moment of work in its own right.
Psychoanalysis in the strict sense — with several sessions a week and the use of the couch — is offered at the Regroupement in English and Farsi. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy, conducted at a lesser frequency, is offered in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Farsi — each of our clinicians working in a particular combination of these languages. At the time of first contact, we direct you to the clinician whose language of consultation and availability best correspond to your situation.
If something in these pages resonates with you — if you sense that what you are seeking is not a quick adjustment but in-depth work on what structures your life — we would be glad to meet you. A first meeting is the occasion to ask your questions, and to see whether this kind of work, and the analyst who receives you, suits you.
Telephone: 514 - 497 - 8014
Email: info@psychologues-montreal.net
Address: 120-2222, René-Lévesque O, Montréal, H3H 1R6
Le Regroupement Psychologues Montréal inc. – Psychotherapists trained in the psychoanalytic approach, in service of your wellbeing.