Luiz Motta-Teixeira

Currently only offering on-line sessions due to Covid. 

Please feel free to leave me a confidential voicemail if I am unable to answer the phone and I will call you back as soon as possible.

I am a Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and have been practising for 15 years.

As well as my private practice I work in the Tavistock Institute, part of the Tavistock NHS Trust Paychotherapeutic building, one of the largest in the UK.

My practice is easy to get to for anybody in Central London and is only 5 mins from the tube station. It is a very quiet area and very secluded.

I provide talking therapy in regular (weekly or more often) 50-min sessions (currently online only). 

The Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic approach to therapy is based on the idea of a 'psyche' (mind or 'soul' - a centre of individual experience) which is necessarily complex and includes many levels of operation and motivation.

As we go through life, experiences present us with challenges, difficulties and tensions. The way we handle (or fail to deal with) these is not solely reliant on 'knowing what to do'.  In actual fact, more often than not, the cognitive aspect of any experience is only one part of what plays into our responses (both internal and external). Our feelings, beliefs, personal styles, secret desires, and most importantly, UNCONSCIOUS wishes and phantasies are highly operative and influential. 

The Psychodynamic approach acknowledges the presence of powerful INTERNAL DYNAMICS (and ensuing tensions between different 'parts' of us operating at cross purposes, for instance). The Psychoanalytic approach places substantial emphasis on the UNCONSCIOUS and aims to facilitate GROWTH (so as to increase our capacity to deal with complex challenges) through the INTEGRATION of (better understood) INTERNAL forces. 

The 'Know thyself' dictum is a profound one and a lifelong quest, often helped (or hindered) through the 'mirror' of others: our relationships (past, present and future) are marked and markers of our 'ways of operating'.  The Aim of therapy is to ELUCIDATE the patterns we develop in our relationships, to gain aware of when our 'DEFENCES' become counter-productive and to DEVELOP the CAPACITIES to approach experiences and relationships from a more 'CENTRED' perspective, enhancing their value, instead of feeling 'stuck' in defeating 'PATTERNS'. 

First encounters are opportunities to consider both the client's needs and wishes, and the applicability of what the therapist has to offer.  They may be called 'assessments' or 'consultations' (with a view to engaging in the process of therapy, or to investigating other possibilities.