A dance with life
Isabel Cristina says of her encounter with psychoanalysis: “It was fostered by my participation in study groups and through the opportunity to embark on a journey, an adventure in Europe.”
Isabel Cristina is a psychologist and says that, “in her studies, very little is said about the unconscious, the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, or other important psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan. She has been able to engage with them thanks to the study groups”.
She goes on to say that, “during her psychology studies, whilst dynamic psychology does address these topics to some extent (albeit limited to the conscious mind), the theoretical content regarding the unconscious, as well as the detailed study of its pioneers, amounts to little more than a taste; it is not explored in depth as it is in psychoanalysis and all that stems from it”.
This year, in 2026, Isabel Cristina visited Valladolid for the La Otra psiquiatría conference entitled “Melancholy Once Again”. She then set off for Tübingen for the causAbock conference entitled “Invention, a singular path”
Speaking of these conferences, Isabel Cristina continues, “she couldn’t stop wondering about a few things regarding her formation, especially after listening to the psychoanalyst José María Álvarez. There, in Spain, she reflected once more on the pigeonholing of patients into diagnoses based on manuals such as the DSM”.
According to Isabel Cristina, “she realises that through psychoanalysis she can approach something beyond a mere generalised and technical diagnosis; a genuine interest in listening to the person who would come to her practice”.
Travelling with her study group also allowed her to “explore and recognise the subjectivity and singularity, both of each member of the group and of her own”. In other words, that which psychoanalysis aims at: subjectivity and singularity.
This was a theme explored at the conference in Tübingen, approached from the perspective of invention, through psychoanalytic experience. She tells us that from this conference, “her interest in learning about and understanding psychoanalysis was born—and why not?—in training as a psychoanalyst and in exploring her unconscious through analysis”.
This journey, according to Isabel Cristina, “also allowed her, in a certain way, to rediscover her body. To feel once again that, for example, through dance, she had found in the past a way to reframe her pain or suffering and to bring joy to others. A way to process that which is not spoken of”.
At the end of this interview, Isabel Cristina says that this journey also reminded her of some past experiences. In these, the emergence of “a certain anxiety when facing some kind of challenge” required her to stand firm “in the face of what she desired, to realise that in the end things turned out well and that it was indeed possible”.
Sticking to her commitment to the journey, the interviewee continues, was a way of escaping what she calls her “avoidances”. This is, according to her, “something she used to do from time to time. Whatever was necessary to disappear or (escape from) what was desired; to feel uneasy when seeing that things were going well, as if it were an impossibility.” “Or, as if perhaps, she could only recognise ‘tranquillity’ amidst the chaos.”
Back home, she tells us at the end, “she has brought back a message from Sigmund Freud that will accompany her in her reading. It is a bookmark from the publisher Artemisa Verlag featuring Freud’s quote on psychoanalytic healing through love”.
A bet on, and for, dancing with life.
