A Psychologist in Hong Kong
In recent years, the world has changed at a remarkable pace, reshaped by the digital revolution. But has it changed in the way we had hoped?
Unregulated titles, quick-fix therapies: where to find your bearings?
Across the world, and particularly in Hong Kong, that transitional space between East and West, new challenges are taking root. A crossroads of cultures and practices, this space offers a wide range of approaches to healthcare. Yet this very diversity can make it harder for patients and families to tell professional practice apart from what is not.
In this context, whom can we trust? In Hong Kong, the title of psychologist is not yet protected by law. An accreditation scheme exists, but it remains voluntary, so anyone can still call themselves a psychologist, a psychotherapist, a counsellor or a therapist, whatever their training. In the field of mental health, the legal framework in Hong Kong is still taking shape.
Across the world, and in Hong Kong in particular, new forms of care have emerged. Many therapies now promise a swift, almost magical cure for the painful symptoms of sadness, anxiety or anger. This wish for speed is understandable: it reflects an age that values immediacy, the age of Nike's "just do it".
The age of "just do it"
Frank Summers, an American clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst and the author of numerous articles and books, reflects on this new world in which doing and acting reign supreme. In his article "Psychoanalysis in the Age of 'Just Do It'", he examines one of the most successful advertising campaigns of our time: Nike and its famous slogan.
Human experience has three dimensions: emotion, thought and action. "Just do it" implies that feeling and thinking should be set aside in favour of action. The Nike revolution thus erases two of the three spheres of human activity: emotion and thought.
This split between the three spheres reveals an impatience to act, with no concern for being or for thinking. "Just do it" becomes a command to stop feeling and stop thinking, and simply to do.
Why does it appeal to us so? Because there is something magical about that "just". Our age seems to prize certainty in action. Emotion and thought are then devalued, seen as a weakness, as action becomes an end in itself.
And so we often hear: "I just need to be more assertive, just stop getting angry, just stop worrying about what others think, just get more organised…" The list goes on, and the message is clear. That "just" suggests no questioning or reflection is needed to understand why we "just don't do it", or why we remain caught in the same old patterns. There would be nothing to understand about what keeps us from the path we wish to take, nothing to understand about what holds us back from the action we so long for.
The questions psychoanalysis asks
In psychoanalysis, as in psychoanalytic therapy, we explore meaning and motivation. We ask: "Why might you do this? What could it mean? How is it that, right now, this is the only way you have of doing things?" These are precisely the questions that the "just do it" culture brushes aside in favour of immediate action.
For, as Frank Summers reminds us, civilised people think before they act. In his famous 1911 paper, "Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning", Freud argues that the psychological journey from childhood to maturity lies essentially in the capacity to delay action. Infants and very young children move straight from impulse to action, with nothing in between: "I want, I take." As we mature, we learn to break that chain. We add an intermediate step: after the impulse and before the action, we think. Little by little, we move from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. Modern psychology knows this Freudian idea as "delayed gratification" or "frustration tolerance".
Feeling, thinking… then doing
At its core, self-analysis is not about acting quickly. It draws on emotional depth (feeling) and cognitive depth (thinking) to bring about meaningful action (doing). In psychoanalysis, we learn to listen to our experience in all its complexity, and to explore thought and emotion as the foundations of how we act.
Yet analytic work is about far more than thinking. The aim is to live. And when it comes to living, thought is a great help, but it can only take us so far. At some point, we must act. Once every feeling has been reflected upon, every advantage and drawback weighed, and every unconscious dynamic understood, we need the courage to live. And that means doing something.
Our approach
It is in this spirit that we approach our work, in both the assessment and the treatment of difficulties and suffering. We do not offer approaches that focus solely on symptoms or promise quick relief, which often belong to a logic of action, of "just get better".
Instead, we offer a professional and analytical approach, grounded in reflective work and aimed at deep understanding and lasting change, in a setting of psychological safety.