Nikos Marinos Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

06/10/2025

Boredom and Disconnection in Love

A lyrical essay on how boredom and disconnection haunt love relationships—not as proof of their failure, but as invitations to deeper presence, risk, and recognition.

by Niko Marinos
https://www.nikosmarinos.com/boredom-and-disconnection-in-love.html

05/10/2025

At the heart of human existence is a tragic ambiguity: the fact that we experience ourselves both as subject and object, internal and external, at the same time, and can never fully inhabit either state.

In her 1947 book, Simone de Beauvoir addresses the ethical implications of this uncertainty and the ‘agonising evidence of freedom’ it presents, along with the opportunity it creates for continual self-definition. In this Close Readings episode Jonathan Rée and James Wood discuss these arguments and Beauvoir’s warnings against trying to evade the responsibilities imposed upon us by this ambiguity. They also look at the ways in which Beauvoir developed these ideas in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘦𝘹 and her novels, and her remarkable readings of George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster.

Listen to an extract from this episode:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/conversations-in-philosophy-the-ethics-of-ambiguity-by-simone-de-beauvoir

Or search for the Close Readings podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe here:
https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/close-readings

04/10/2025

The Labyrinth of Love
A short story about suffering, meaning, and the slow art of being found

by Niko Marinos

Eleanor and Jonah, a writer and a bartender, engage in a deep conversation about the meaning of life and suffering in a Parisian café. They explore whether life has a predetermined pattern or if it is random, with Eleanor advocating for the transformative power of meaning and Jonah arguing for the liberating nature of randomness. Their discussion reveals their personal struggles with pain and the search for purpose, ultimately leading them to consider the possibility of meaning as a dialogue with the universe.
Read the full story at:https://www.nikosmarinos.com/the-labyrinth-of-love.html

27/09/2025

What does it mean to invent psychoanalysis anew—for each patient, each session, each breath?

In this evocative essay, therapist and writer Niko Marinos invites us into the quiet alchemy of the therapeutic encounter. Blending clinical depth, poetic narrative, and the six pillars of the Relational Integrity framework, Staying With the Living Encounter challenges traditional notions of interpretation, progress, and neutrality. Instead, it centers the living, trembling, ever-changing presence between two people in a room.

From raw, vivid vignettes—where silence becomes a holding space, and contradiction a sign of truth—to reflective guidance for clinicians, the essay speaks to therapists, students, and anyone drawn to the mystery of transformation. Here, psychoanalysis is not a fixed method but a ritual of attention, of bearing witness, of staying.

For those who believe that healing is found not in the explanation, but in the human act of staying with what hurts—this is your companion.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE: www.nikosmarinos.com

19/11/2024

Because we feel collectively very good about humour, it can sound odd to suggest that some of us should try to become a little less funny about ourselves. We shouldn’t – for our own sakes – be quite as comedic as we are.

A person who grows up in authentic circumstances is allowed to feel sad whenever an occasion demands it. They can cry when someone leaves them, be happy when good news arrives, get angry when they’ve been hurt, and envious when someone acquires something they would have liked to have.

But there are other sorts of childhood where what an offspring experiences is far too dangerous for those around them. Parents might be too angry or depressed to tolerate reality, forcing their children into precocious proto-careers on the comedy circuit. A person may tell us with a witty air that getting slapped around by their ‘daft’ uncle was a ‘hoot.’ News of tragic events may be delivered in such light-hearted ways that we forget to notice the pain ruthlessly going unmentioned.

It can be the greatest kindness to tell a funny friend that though we have the highest respect for their comic talents, we don’t necessarily always want to laugh.

Fed up of paywalls? A subscription to The School of Life instantly unlocks not just our ever-expanding library of Articles on our website, but also more than 50 tailored learning journeys on our App, designed to suit your particular needs.

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19/11/2024

“A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow th…

04/10/2024

High ambitions are noble and important, but there can also come a point when they become the sources of terrible trouble and unnecessary panic.

One way of undercutting our more reckless ideals and perfectionism was pioneered by a British psychoanalyst called Donald Winnicott in the 1950s. Winnicott specialised in relationships between parents and children. In his clinical practice, he often met with parents who felt like failures: perhaps because their children hadn’t got into the best schools, or because there were sometimes arguments around the dinner table or the house wasn’t always completely tidy.

Winnicott’s crucial insight was that the parents’ agony was coming from a particular place: excessive hope. Their despair was a consequence of a cruel and counterproductive perfectionism.

To address this, Winnicott developed a charming phrase: what he called ‘the good enough parent’. No child, he insisted, needs an ideal parent. They just need an OK, pretty decent, usually well intentioned, sometimes grumpy but basically reasonable father or mother. The concept of ‘good enough’ was invented as an escape from dangerous ideals. It began in relation to parenthood, but it can be applied across life more generally, especially around work and love.

To learn more, click the link.

https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/good-enough-is-good-enough/

12/09/2024

It can, at points, seem horrifically clear that simply no one really cares. They barely notice our presence, they hardly stick around to listen to what we have to say, they catch none of our hints – and they are overwhelmingly preoccupied with their own projects and day-to-day concerns.

On the basis of such evidence, it is easy for us to fall into a large, damning and dangerously heart-breaking conclusion about our situation: that we are profoundly alone – far beyond any possibility of connection or empathy.

But the truth may be at once more mundane and rather more hopeful. Most of us are extremely keen to help when we notice an urgent need, but we are also continuously distracted, grievously taken up with our lives and unlikely to spot that there is anything at all the matter with people around us unless the problem is spelt out in the clearest, most unambiguous terms. In other words, we respond well to screams, but terribly to hints.

We should rehearse these facts without rancour or surprise when we are fragile and desperate. The apparent indifference of others is only apparent. We need to learn to scream.

To learn more, click the link:
https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/on-asking-for-help/

05/09/2024

05/09/2024

Walking through her garden one day, Virginia Woolf had an exquisite epiphany about creativity and the meaning of life – read it at the link: https://mailchi.mp/themarginalian/virginia-cotton-wool

23/04/2024

23/04/2024

“I’ve shown women as they are, as divided human beings, and not as they ought to be.” —Simone de Beauvoir https://buff.ly/2wLkofv