At London Trusted Therapy, we draw on contemporary psychodynamic and psychoanalytic thinking that has evolved far beyond Freud’s original theories. Modern psychodynamic therapy integrates insights from attachment theory, neuroscience, and relational approaches, whilst maintaining the core belief that understanding yourself more deeply — including the parts you’ve hidden from yourself — is central to healing and growth.
Psychodynamic therapy explores how your past continues to influence your present. Early experiences with caregivers create internal working models — unconscious templates for relationships and self-understanding — that shape your expectations, emotional responses, and patterns of relating. These patterns often become most visible in your relationships, including your relationship with your therapist.
4.86 rating based on Google and Trustpilot reviews
Psychodynamic therapy is particularly valuable for individuals who want to understand themselves more deeply rather than simply manage symptoms. It’s especially helpful if you find yourself repeating the same patterns — in relationships, work, or inner life — despite genuine efforts to change. These recurring difficulties often reflect unconscious dynamics that need space to be explored and understood.
You might benefit from this approach if you experience anxiety or depression that feels hard to explain, feel stuck in ways of being that no longer serve you, or notice persistent relationship patterns. Psychodynamic therapy is also well suited to those grappling with identity concerns, chronic emptiness, or difficulties sustaining meaningful, intimate connections.
This approach works best for people who value depth and self-understanding, are open to exploring uncomfortable emotions, and are curious about the deeper “why” beneath their struggles. If your difficulties are rooted in early experiences, trauma, or complex family dynamics — and if you’re willing to engage in longer-term, reflective work — psychodynamic therapy can be profoundly transformative.
Psychodynamic couples work explores how each partner's unconscious expectations, early attachment patterns, and unresolved conflicts from their families of origin play out in the relationship. This is particularly valuable when couples find themselves locked in repetitive conflicts that don't respond to logical problem-solving or improved communication techniques.
You might benefit from this approach if your conflicts seem disproportionate to the surface issues, if you or your partner repeatedly misinterpret each other's intentions, or if past relationships seem to be interfering with your current one. Psychodynamic work helps couples understand how they unconsciously trigger each other's vulnerabilities and defences.
This approach is valuable when one or both partners struggle with intimacy, when there are patterns of pursuing and distancing, or when unconscious role assignments (parent-child, rescuer-victim) have developed. It helps couples move beyond blame toward understanding how they've co-created their difficulties and how both partners' unconscious processes contribute to their challenges.
Psychodynamic family therapy explores how unconscious family patterns, unresolved conflicts from previous generations, and hidden family dynamics shape current relationships and difficulties. This approach recognises that families often develop unconscious roles, rules, and communication patterns that can limit growth and create psychological difficulties.
This is particularly valuable for families where certain feelings or topics are taboo, where children are unconsciously carrying burdens from parental conflicts or earlier generations, or where family members feel stuck in rigid roles. Psychodynamic work can help families understand transgenerational patterns — how difficulties are passed down through families — and begin to break these cycles.
Families benefit from exploring projection, scapegoating, and other unconscious processes that can make one family member the "identified patient" whilst the family system's deeper difficulties remain hidden. This approach supports families in developing more conscious, authentic relationships and freeing each member from restrictive unconscious patterns.
Psychodynamic therapy typically unfolds gradually over an extended period, allowing time for deep exploration and working through of unconscious patterns. We meet regularly — often weekly or more frequently for intensive work — creating consistency that supports the development of a meaningful therapeutic relationship.
In sessions, we encourage you to speak as freely as possible about whatever comes to mind — thoughts, feelings, dreams, memories, fantasies. This "free association" helps bypass conscious censoring and brings unconscious material into awareness. We pay attention to what you say, how you say it, what you don't say, and the feelings that arise between us.
We're particularly interested in patterns: patterns in your relationships, in how you present yourself, in what you avoid, in how you experience us and the therapy. We might notice when you idealise or devalue, when you become defensive or seductive, when you withdraw or become hostile. These patterns often mirror dynamics from your early life and current relationships.
Dreams, slips of the tongue, and seemingly random associations are all valuable material for understanding your unconscious world. We help you explore the meanings beneath surface content, understanding defences you've developed, and recognising how early experiences continue to shape your present life.
The therapeutic relationship itself becomes a crucial tool for change. How you experience us, the feelings that arise between us, the expectations you bring — all provide invaluable information about your internal world and relationship patterns. By exploring these dynamics together with curiosity and compassion, change unfolds naturally.
We work at a depth and pace that feels manageable, respecting your defences whilst gently inviting you to explore what lies beneath. Psychodynamic therapy isn't about breaking down defences forcefully; it's about understanding why they developed and gradually developing new, more flexible ways of protecting yourself and relating to others.
Mental processes, feelings, conflicts, and motivations operating outside conscious awareness but profoundly influencing thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.
Unconscious psychological strategies — repression, denial, projection, rationalisation, splitting — that protect against anxiety and psychological pain.
The process of unconsciously experiencing your therapist or others through the lens of past relationships, projecting expectations and feelings from earlier relationships onto present ones.
The therapist's emotional responses to you, which provide valuable information about your unconscious communications and impact on others.
The repeated exploration and processing of conflicts, feelings, and patterns, allowing deep understanding and gradual change rather than quick insight alone.
Speaking whatever comes to mind without censoring, helping bypass conscious defences and access unconscious material.
Unconscious opposition to therapeutic exploration, usually protecting against painful feelings or difficult truths, and itself providing important information.
The tendency to unconsciously recreate problematic patterns from the past, repeating rather than remembering, until patterns are understood and worked through.
Mental representations of important people from your past that continue to influence your current relationships and sense of self.
Struggles between different parts of yourself — different needs, desires, or beliefs — that create psychological distress when unresolved or unconscious.
Individual and Couples Psychotherapist
Individual and Couples Psychotherapist
Individual and Couples Psychotherapist EMDR
Individual Couples and Family Psychotherapist
Individual and Couples Psychotherapist
Individual Couples Family Psychotherapist
Counselling Psychologist Individual Couples and Family Psychotherapist
Counselling Psychologist Individual and Couples Psychotherapist EMDR
Individual Couples Family and Group Psychotherapist EMDR
Counselling Psychologist Individual and Family Psychotherapist EMDR
Psychotherapist
Should you feel that your first session did not meet your expectations or that your therapist wasn’t a good fit, we will provide another session completely free of charge with a different practitioner.
We are proud to work in partnership with major UK and global insurers, as an approved mental health provider, supporting various clients in their therapy journey around the globe.
