Working with me
I am a senior psychoanalyst-in-training based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, working both online and in person with local and international patients.
My background in the arts and humanities informs my analytic work. Psychoanalysis has long been connected to literature, philosophy, and the study of language. This perspective supports careful attention to how people speak about their lives and to the meanings, patterns, and nuances that emerge in their speech over time.
I am in the final stages of my clinical training with the Centre for Lacanian Analysis Aotearoa, where I am a clinical member. I am a member of the International Forums of the Lacanian Field. I also hold a PhD in the Arts from the University of New South Wales.
I welcome people from diverse backgrounds and experiences. My work is attentive to the ways social and cultural factors, including class, race, gender, and sexuality, shape the lives of those I work with.
My approach
My practice is informed by a Lacanian orientation, which emphasises the role of language and affect in psychological suffering.
In practice, this means listening less for what a person intends to say than for what their speech says in spite of them: the word that keeps returning, the phrase that catches, the slip that interrupts a familiar story. Rather than offering explanations, I try to draw attention to what has been said, so that a person can hear something in their own words they had not heard before.
Through careful attention to a person's speech over time, recurring elements in their experience begin to emerge, bringing into view the unconscious structures that shape their life and the particular forms their suffering takes. This opens the possibility of a different relationship to one's symptoms, and of discovering new ways of living.
Beginning analysis
To begin, we meet four times over the course of a month to explore what brings you to analysis and whether this work feels right for you. If we decide to proceed into analytic work, sessions are typically held weekly or twice weekly. Fees are discussed according to individual circumstances.
Richard B. Keys
Psychoanalyst-in-training with the CLA
Doctor of Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Clinical Member, Centre for Lacanian Analysis Aotearoa
Member, International Forums of the Lacanian Field
Contact: richard.benjamin.keys@gmail.com