Highbury Counselling Centre
Location: Finsbury Park, London
About: Our organisation offers longer term and affordable psychodynamic psychotherapy in the community. We work on a case by case basis, we don’t have a diagnosis of exclusion, we work with adults, and we seek to offer an alternative to the «symptom-based» and short-term interventions offered through statutory services in our area, for those who’d find this alternative useful. Our honorary counsellors are mostly in training, at different stages of their formation. We have been operating for more than 15 years from Islington, and moved to Finsbury Park in 2022.
Contact: https://www.wlm.org.uk/counselling
“Cat on a hot tin roof”
Location: Faculdade de Educação, Universidade Federal Fluminense
About: This is a permanent project in which teachers from the Faculty of Education with training in Psychology or Psychoanalysis in addition to collaborators (psychology and pedagogy students AND professionals trained in areas related to mental health) offer schedules for reception and brief psychoanalytic listening (from 4 to 8 meetings), the duration can be extended according to the possibilities of collaborators. Services take place throughout the year, including during school holidays, as these are serious cases, difficult and delicate situations, in situations of psychological and Social. We currently have a network of 8 psychoanalyst teachers working free of charge plus 10 trained employees.
Contact: http://gape.uff.br/?page_id=893
Psy-network “Ψ-δικτυο”
Location: Athens, Greece
About: This initiative was launched in 2010 in response to the deep economic recession, the crisis that brought the IMF and the European institutions, namely “the Troika” to Greece. The purpose was to give people without financial means access to affordable psychotherapy. The framework is multi-diverse, with psychologists of various specialties, but staffed by several psychoanalysts who put their own stamp on the culture of the institution. The clinical framework is of a fixed duration, with no prohibition of continuation with a new therapeutic contract outside the network with the same therapist. Many therapeutic courses started as a fixed short term psychodynamic psychotherapy, developing to psychoanalysis.
Contact: https://psy-diktyo.gr/
info.psydiktyo@gmail.com
“Estação Psicanálise”
Location: Campinas, state of São Paulo, Brazil
About: The history of the collective begins in 2018, from two groups of psychoanalysts questioning the political and social scenario in Brazil. The question that hung in the air was: what can analysts do, in the city, in front of a scenario in which people are muted by different modes of segregation and exclusion? After some time of theoretical study, of themes that deal with psychoanalysis, “the social”, and “the political”, in 2019 the group chose a place in the city of Campinas, to start the psychoanalytic consultations, which would not be intermediated by the monetary payment. Since then, our clinical and, consequently, theoretical practice, has been deconstructed and rebuilt. We are guided by the premise that there are effects of the “subject of the unconscious” to be heard in the city, people who need a space to elaborate their psychic suffering. And also that the circulation of discourses can potentially cause movement in the social bond. Our practice takes place on Saturdays, between 9 am and 12 pm, at a train station in the city center, which has been deactivated and is now a cultural center, managed by the municipal authorities. These are individual consultations, without monetary payment, and we have a rotation system among the group’s analysts, who are divided into a scale for each Saturday of attendance. The collective has no formal link with institutions and is organized horizontally, based on the diversity of its members’ backgrounds. We hold biweekly meetings to maintain practical issues, and also a device for the construction and discussion of clinical cases, inspired by the Clinical Section, as proposed by Jacques Lacan (1972). In this device, we intend to build and discuss the cases, as well as support the investigation regarding the dimension of the transference, considering the rotation of our service device. In addition, we are starting work on Saturday afternoons, once a month, to discuss the topic of transference, in this “collective” context. We do not have a specific theoretical direction, but most members of the collective support a Freudian and Lacanian orientation for their formation. To join the collective, the members go through a reception process, where we try to hear about the desire and transference with this “public clinic” bet.
Contact: Instagram @estacaopsicanalise
Bubble and Speak
Location: London, UK
About: Our organisation was founded in 2016 and follows the principles of “psychoanalysis in the community” as conceived of by Françoise Dolto and the La Maison Verte movement in France. We aim to offer a convivial space to children under 4 years of age and their parents or carers. Anyone with a child in this age group, including expecting parents, can attend free of charge and without a need to make an appointment. Children can begin to socialise and meet their peers while still in the comforting presence fo their carers. Our aim is to support them in the awakening of their subjectivity, as well as support parents in the challenges of raising them, which for most of them include not just psychological challenges but also poverty, migration, absence of extended family, lack of information about available resources etc. Our staff, called “Welcomers” are all psychoanalytically oriented and attend to our service users through speaking, listening and playing. There are no restrictions on families’ origins, catchment area of indeed the child’s psychological considerations.
Contact: bubbleandspeak.org.uk
hello@bubbleandspeak.org.uk
Psicanálise na Praça Roosevelt
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
About: We occupied Praça Roosevelt on a Saturday in July, 2017. Since then, we sustain a free psychanalysis clinic for local people. Our first motivation was to make a statement against the parliamentary coup that had just happened in Brazil. Also, to go against the typically reactionary and elitist position of local psychoanalysis. Our clinical practice is either the typical psychoanalytic pair and its usual transference, but also the circulation of such pair, in which the same person who reaches us can talk to a different psychoanalyst at each time.
Contact: Instagram @psicanalisenapracaroosevelt
psicanaliseroosevelt@gmail.com
O Cool das Clínicas
Location: Centro de São Paulo, Brasil. Atuamos na Praça Marechal Deodoro
About: The Collective has been operating since 2021, given the situation and number of homeless people that São Paulo has suffered for so many years, and which has worsened with the pandemic. Initially the actions were itinerant, and we decided to settle in Praça Marechal deodoro, as we noticed interesting crossings of the territory. We offer a small breakfast and optional listening. Theorists such as Freud, Miriam Debieux Rosa, Jorge and Emília Broide influence the work.
Contact: Instagram @ocooldasclinica
The Society for Social & Critical psychoanalysis
Location: Truro, Cornwall, UK
About: SSCP was established in 2010 and is one of only two psychoanalytic trainings in the SW region. SSCP has a critical and comparative ethos and is committed to making psychoanalysis as a clinical practice more accessible and responsive to communities who have been historically marginalised by its exclusionary practices. We have a commitment to address the white, middle class and heteronormative theorisations that have historically structured psychoanalysis. To this end we run a county wide low cost clinic to offer psychoanalysis to communities who have been traditionally underrepresented in clinical work.
Contact: www.sscp.uk
enquiries@sscp.uk
To discuss clinic as opposed to make a referral ilric.shetland@gmail.com
Veredas: Imigração E Psicanálise
Location: São Paulo, Brasil
About: The Veredas Group aims to clinically and theoretically consolidate the aspects inherent to migrant immigrants and refugees in situations of social and political conflict, recently arrived in São Paulo/Brazil. We have extensive experience, particularly with users of the “Casa do Migrante”. In this place of reception, it is difficult to adapt and move around the city in which they live, with a tendency towards introversion and social isolation that accentuate deep feelings of worthlessness and helplessness, causing great damage to the ability to form new social ties. The research carried out by teams working on migration converges on the following conceptual articulation: the loss of symbolic referents originating from the history and symbolic marks of each social group causes individuals to experience a state of ignorance and depersonalization, as well as all the phenomena characteristic of mourning. . The Project aims to implement and develop institutional, psychosocial and clinical interventions that lead to work on mourning, as well as promoting the social insertion of immigrants, migrants and refugees in the city of São Paulo. We intend to establish spaces for interventions with this population, aiming at individual and group elaborations on the phenomena of exclusion and segregation, pointing out the different possibilities for reconstituting social ties, and favoring affective and work bonds. With the experience developed over years of working with this population, this project also aims to plan and implement a service or activities to assist and intervene with immigrants at the Institute of Psychology, for the population and for foreign students at the University.
Contact: https://www.veredaspsi.com.br
pscip@usp.br
Rede SUR
Location: São Paulo, São Miguel Paulista neighbourhood, Brazil.
About: We believe different psychoanalytic devices, unlike the traditional therapeutic setting, can be devised in areas with different dynamics than the bourgeois city centres and suburbs. Our work is in line with Michel Foucault’s notion of devices. As a combination of different pieces of knowledge, to answer a social fact by sowing a weave between these elements. To create these devices, we start our work with a methodology of qualitative investigation, developed by the coordinators of our collective, Jorge and Emilia Broide, called “Escuta Territorial”, which translates as “territorial listening”. In this investigation, we walk around the neighbourhood where we plan to establish our device and listen to the residents, the local businessman and shopkeepers, so we can get to know the place. So that we have a sense of where the driving forces of the territory are at work. We schedule meetings with the local health and social services. And also schedule groups and individual talks with local residents. At the same time, we always meet as a team to process and systematize all the material we collect. With this method, we can uncover the signifiers that are circulating and that will structure our psychoanalytic devices in this territory. Because they are designed to meet the needs of each community, our devices are never the same.
Contact: https://www.surpsicanalise.com.br/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063767277024
Instagram: @sur.psicanalise
FalaTrans
Location: We practice at the Centro de Psicologia Aplicada (CPA, Center for Applied Psychology) of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), a training clinic located in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Juiz de Fora is a city located 2 hours from the city of Rio de Janeiro. We also offer online psychoanalytic therapy all over Brazil.
About: The name of our collective allows an interpretation of two or more meanings, since it plays with the signifier “fala” which can be understood in our language as a verb (to speak) or a noun (speech). Speak, Trans or Trans Speech.
Falatrans aims to provide a political space for psychological care for trans people. The project carries out social and clinical work for this population, which suffers various forms of violence, prejudice and discrimination in Brazilian society. In this sense, over the years Falatrans has become a reference in the city when it comes to strengthening the network of quality public mental health care for this population. We chose psychoanalytic theory as an axis for theoretical and clinical discussion within contemporary social bonds and scientific productions in universities. In this way, we ask ourselves about the possibilities and limits of how psychoanalysis can contribute to and rethink the subjectivity of our time. To this end, using the clinic and the teachings of Freud and Lacan, we work on the construction of psychoanalytic knowledge that allows for the problematization of ethical clinical constructions and practices.
Contact: Instagram @falatransufjf
falatransufjf@gmail.com
The Red Clinic
Location: Internationally.
About: The Red Clinic is a collective of communist mental health workers united for a radical psychotherapy, for the care of the oppressed, and for uniting the two in the service of communist politics. We aim to develop truly accessible and sustainable provision of psychotherapy for the working-class and the oppressed in the broadest senses of the terms, attentive to the interrelations between axes of oppression, and transcending national borders. This practice will work in tandem with our efforts to develop a novel theoretical basis for psychotherapy today, informed by Marxist, anti-racist, queer feminist, indigenous, decolonial and radical disability theories, learning from our collective experiences in theoretical application, and honing psychotherapy into a critical component of the communist movement.
Contact: www.redclinic.org
Email Redclinicenquiries@gmail.com
Instagram @the.redclinic
Twitter @HealthInquiry
Orchard Therapy
Location: Bristol UK, all our sessions are offered remotely – phone or Zoom/Skype.
About: Our aim is to offer free therapy in a way that is accessible for patients, and possible for busy therapists. The clinic is psychoanalytic/psychodynamic. At Severnside – our umbrella organisation of which all therapists are members – we are trained in the Object Relations school. However many of our therapists are interested in Lacanian ideas and have also had experience and some training in working psychoanalytically in a time-limited therapy.
Contact:
Email orchardtherapy@sipsychotherapy.org
Instituto Sedes Sapientiae
Location: São Paulo, Sp, Brazil.
Contact: https://sedes.org.br/Departamentos/Formacao_Psicanalise/dfp/psicanalistas-atual/
Email Flaviacnmachado@icloud.com
Escuta na Praça
Location: Na praça da Estação, em Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brasil
Contact: Instagram @escutanapraca
Email: escutanapraca.psi@gmail.com
Offene Sprechstunde / Open Counselling
Location: Psychoanalytische Bibliothek, Berlin, Germany.
About: Since 2018, we have been offering Open Counselling once a week in person and once a week by telephone, which anyone can attend, without appointment and without payment. We call this unconditional reception. We offer a place where the unheard can be spoken. The Open Counselling is used by a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons – be it acute crises (including psychotic ones), major upheavals, disturbing perceptions, experiences of marginalization, problems with relatives, partners or friends, questions about psychoanalysis or other reasons. We are a group of psychoanalysts for whom Freud and Lacan are critical points of reference. Originally an initiative of the Psychoanalytische Bibliothek Berlin, which is also the location of the Open Counselling, we have since launched the Forum for the Practice of Psychoanalysis together with others, which coordinates various other activities in addition to the Open Counselling. Coming from different formational backgrounds, we (almost all) work in psychoanalytic practice operating outside of the health insurance system. We align ourselves with Freud’s and Lacan’s understanding of psychoanalysis as an independent (from medicine, psychology, etc.) discipline. We seek and maintain contact with other Lacanian groups as well as local community services. We see the Counselling as a clinic in the polis, in the sense that polis (ancient Greek for city, settlement) has the same etymological root as politics. Our commitment in this context is political – in both directions: To make something of psychoanalysis available to those who otherwise have little access to it. But also, to bring political and social urgency into psychoanalysis. In and through the context of the Counselling, we are interested in creating new ways to transfer and transform the practice of psychoanalysis. At its core, we see analytical listening as crucial here.
Contact: https://psybi-berlin.de/offene-sprechstunde/
Nadine Hartmann coordinates the Open Counselling: hartmannnadine0@gmail.com
Otherwise please write to the secretariat of the Psychoanalytic Library Berlin: bykoriz.anna@yahoo.de
To join The Free Clinics Network please fill the form: https://forms.gle/EssvPc9x8HGYSm9R8
The Free Clinics Network is under construction. It brings together clinical institutions and practitioners around the world involved in offering free or low-cost psychoanalysis. The Free Clinics Network is relevant to both patients and psychoanalysts globally, aiming to promote shared practices among the clinicians and to widen access to psychoanalytic treatment.
In the Free Clinics Network, and in the context of the project FREEPSY, patients are regarded as co-creators of a context of care, and not ‘service users’; and psychoanalytic and other mental health practitioners are refigured as contributors to collective action and collective creativity, not ‘mental health providers’.
The Free Clinics Network was prepared through an ESRC Impact Acceleration grant (University of Essex). A series of mapping workshops with researchers, artists, mental health practitioners, psychoanalysts, and cultural workers, held at The Freud Museum in 2022 and 2023, produced the first multi-perspectival map for the Free Clinics Network.
Please assist us in putting together this Network by answering a set of questions that help us locate and describe your institution and your practices. Please feel free to forward this email and form to other colleagues who work in free or low-cost clinics.
Please get in touch with us with any questions, thoughts, recommendations, events and free-associations that might help us build the Free Clinics Network or establish contact with psychoanalysts working with individuals and groups who do not usually have access to psychoanalysis.
Details about how we will use your information are included in the form. Please add your answers below:
