Doctor Nagpal, Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst

Description

Hello !
I am a psychoanalyst and a psychotherapist with more than 20 years of experience. I am specialised in treating addictions and eating disorders.

Although I am specialised in these fields, I am also a general psychiatrist . I see all kinds of mental conditions: depression, anxiety, lack of confidence, agoraphobia, sexual problems, school problems, personality problems, burnout, post traumatic stress disorder, anger and trust issues....Such problems often give rise to marital discord in couples. So I also see couples with difficulties in their relationships.

I have medical degrees from Oxford and Cambridge . After working in the NHS I moved to Paris in pre Brexit days, where I was a Psychiatrist at the main psychiatric hospital of Paris, St Anne's, and a Staff Member with beds at the American Hospital of Paris. I now live between Cambridge and Paris.

I have for many years been treating patients from all over the world, from New York to Oxford to Singapore. I have an office in Cambridge.

There is no magic cure in psychological illnesses, but with some work you can be cured in most cases. If you were functioning before your illness, you can almost certainly be repaired once again. On average, it takes 3-6 months to recover from the conditions I specialize in, namely eating disorders and addictions.

In marital problems there are two people involved, each with their own baggage ( of jealousy, suspicion, unfaithfulness, fastidiousness, laziness, neediness...). When the differences are minor, things can be ironed out with some adjustments. With some effort on each side, and some common sense counselling, you can get through. That is how most couples muddle through, learn to round their edges and find a more or less stable equilibrium.

But sometimes things are not so easy. Each person is at the end of their tether, with no margin, no space to listen, to compromise, to give way. Each person wants to be heard first. Each person wants what the other cannot give them. Each person wants the same things, of which there is a dearth on both sides. So then what to do? Something more radical has to be done to break the logjam. That is when you need a professional therapist. Because each person has to look at his or her own problems separately, get better separately, improve their capacity to give to the other, make fewer demands on the other, be better able to listen to the other, so that together they can make a success of their union again. So this involves us working together and with each person separately. The purpose is for each person to make some important changes in their own psychological make up. And then hope to find a new, more peaceful equilibrium.

By the way, the same changes will also make you a greater, better person all round, in work and in society generally. So it is an investment worth making.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the majority of my appointments are held via video or telephone. No matter where in the world you are, we can arrange a time that suits the both of us. This works for almost all my patients, including couples.

My usual fee is 100 £ per session, per person. Fees are payable at least one week in advance. A great rule to make you be on time and to do some thinking before the session! If you cancel a session with less than 48 hours’ notice, the session will be owed.


***

Why should our clients choose you?

To be a good therapist it is not enough to be kind, empathetic and non judgemental. You also have to know about the unconscious software which determines our behaviour. This is why psychoanalysts have to be psychoanalyzed themselves, in order to see first hand the nature, strengths and faults of their own machinery, and conquer, or at least control, their own demands, hungers, needs from others, including from their patients ( counter transference). So a psychotherapist needs to have not just a bookish knowledge, degrees and diplomas, but a knowledge of his own Unconscious.

For the same reasons, only kindness and sympathy, on the part of the therapist, are dangers. The patient will already be trying to relieve his or her mental pain by asking for love and sympathy from everybody around them. He or she will also try to extract this from the therapist. This is to be avoided. Of course, the psychoanalyst is kind and sympathetic, and in certain acute situations this can be very important ( bereavement, shock, loss, ) but to stay at this level in chronic cases would be a mistake. It keeps the patient stuck where he is, in an asking, begging position. Instead of love, the analyst offers a rereading of the patient’s own words and their demand for love. Posing the questions : What are you really asking for? From whom? Why? Since when?

And then we have to go to the causes of the problem, which may be recent or longstanding. This involves examining recent events that precipitated the crisis, and then also the fundamentals: Mummy, Daddy, food, body image, sex, hygiene, beliefs etc. We have to do this to repair the damaged software and to remobilise your own reserves , so that you become independent and self sufficient (again).

My new contribution to the art: the “writing cure”.
I have adapted the talking cure into a « writing cure ». I write verbatim, word for word, quickly, in shorthand, in pencil, the patient's discourse as he or she speaks in free association. At the next session we re-read the text before moving forward. Thus, the patient hears what they said, they get distance from themselves, and they must therefore choose their words carefully, speak their truth, from the most intimate part of themself.

Whenever we speak, we are also saying something else, something else about ourselves, about our present inner state, our present unsatisfied hunger, wishes, needs. When we speak , in between the words, something else is also trying to be said, heard. There is an Unconscious part of us that is trying to be heard, that is repeating itself.

And the Freudian technique of free association is based on the hypothesis that if we remove the exigencies of rational or polite discourse, and talk freely, saying whatever comes to our mind, then this deeper, unconscious text will, sooner or later, come out. Because it is trying all the time to come out, if only somebody would listen.

And this is the same hidden part that is causing our symptoms ( eating, smoking, drinking, drugs, shopping, anxiety, depression, procrastination, timidity, loudness, bossiness, attention seeking, jealousy, neediness, dependence..). Something is being played out, repeated, in a disguised way, in our symptoms. In other words, certain old or new needs, desires, wishes, hurts are being played out. Certain old conversations have not been properly heard, expressed, understood and are being said in this way, in the symptoms. The child inside is saying, demonstrating, sometimes screaming, his or her pain in the symptoms. The body itself is being scorched, wrought, marked.

So this Unconscious text is what we look for, listen for, in the written transcription of the session. What is really trying to be said? And to whom? Why? Since when? This hidden message is not available to the subject but is contained, in code, in the symptoms. Between the words is the true message, the true cause of the hunger, the true meaning of the anorexia, the origin of the anxiety, the origin of the depression, the interpretation of the craving for drugs, food, sweets, attention, sex.... And when it is heard, and in my technique, when it is written out and re read, it slowly dissipates. Attention: it takes a certain time, a certain work. Some 3- 6 months .

This slow disentanglement of certain unhappy unconscious (and conscious) thoughts in the back of the mind is called a psychoanalysis, or its poor cousin, a psychodynamic psychotherapy.

By this work the hard disk is wiped clean of certain unhappy childhood days, of certain bad relationships and incidents, thus liberating computer space, band width in your psychological system. And finally, as this work is done, instead of that emptyness and loneliness inside there is a certain calm. Sweet and intelligent words come back. Instead of a hunger at the mouth, there is a fullness, a satisfaction . You are more available for yourself and for others.

As a point of information, each session implies over an hour of work. There is first of all the session itself, some 30 minutes, during which I write verbatim your words in shorthand. After the session I have to write it up in fair, to be able to read every word clearly. And then I study the text, to understand what is going on. At the next session I re read aloud the previous session, so the patient hears what he said. And we continue from where we left off. With this written record, we can also go back to all the material in the future.

This is my theory and practice, as a lacanian psychoanalyst who has thought about the subject and made this original contribution to the old Freudian technique of the talking cure. ( I will soon publish my work, but you are getting a preview!) You may like to reflect on it and compare my theory and technique with that of others. It is far from the kindly Counsellor who bucks you up. Nor is it like the Behaviour Therapist who keeps telling you how you must stop doing what you obviously cannot stop doing (eating, drinking, being afraid, being jealous, being depressed,...). It is also far from the average psychiatrist, for whom your symptoms are the result of deranged neurotransmitters and biology. And all he can offer is antidepressants. ( In mild to moderate depression, in other words in most cases, antidepressants are no better than placebo.)

This is my long answer to the question at the top of this column: why should our clients choose you? I am sorry for the tough read, but you are about to make a big, big decision, that could cost you months of effort and much money. So best to take this trouble to think about it and read a little about how your therapist works. We are not all the same, indeed we are very different. In fact if you find anybody else saying or doing the same things as me I would be interested to know.

Ad ID: 8420443649