Blog & Articles
Understanding CPTSD: Treatment and Recovery Strategies for Complex Trauma in Melbourne
Complex PTSD develops from prolonged or repeated traumatic experience, and its effects reach far deeper than a single event. This article explores what CPTSD is, how it differs from PTSD, and why a psychoanalytic approach offers something that symptom-focused treatments often cannot: a genuine encounter with the meaning and history embedded in suffering.
Adolescence and the Family: A Psychoanalytic Reading
Adolescence is not a problem to be solved, but for many Melbourne families the intensity of this period can leave parents feeling shut out, helpless, or frightened. Clinical psychologist Myles Medwell offers a psychoanalytic perspective on what teenagers are really navigating, why the conflict with parents is often necessary, and how families can find support before the distance becomes too wide to bridge.
Psychoanalysis vs ‘Healing Culture’
Modern wellness culture promises to regulate, optimise, and return you to wholeness — but psychoanalysis begins from a fundamentally different place. Rather than strengthening the ego or silencing your symptoms, a psychoanalytic approach invites you to listen to what your unconscious is already saying. If you’ve ever felt that conventional therapy wasn’t quite reaching the right place, this article explores why depth-oriented work offers something different.
Narcissism and the Fragile Self
Narcissism is often misunderstood as arrogance or excessive self-love. Clinically, however, many narcissistic traits are organised around a deeply fragile self-esteem — a self structured defensively against shame and collapse. Beneath sensitivity to criticism, relational volatility, or oscillations between confidence and self-doubt lies a fundamental question of recognition. This article explores narcissistic wounds from a Lacanian perspective and examines how psychoanalytic therapy in Melbourne can support the development of a more stable and integrated sense of self.
Why “Feeling Your Feelings” Is Not Enough
“Freud is frequently mischaracterised in popular psychology as an advocate of emotional venting. However, a close reading of The Unconscious (1915) reveals that repression operates primarily on the level of representations—the ideational content—rather than on the affect itself. This paper argues that the ‘hydraulic model’ of the psyche is a fundamental misunderstanding of clinical practice.”
Eroticising Diagnosis
In this reflection from the Brisbane Psychoanalytic Congress, Myles Medwell explores how diagnosis in psychology is often stripped of its deeper meaning. By rethinking diagnosis as something erotic – rooted in desire, mystery, and relational dynamics – he invites readers to consider how naming can both trap and transform us.