I had quite a fortunate life with love. In pre-primary school, I was a playboy. Since then, I had numerous, and wonderful partners. In the late 2010’s, I was experimenting with relationship anarchy. Enthusiastic, I even dedicated a chapter of my first book to non-monogamy. In those days, people started to come to me for advice, mostly anxious straight girls struggling with polyamory and their pathetic boyfriends who wanted to fuck more girls while letting them do all the emotional labour of figuring how to make it work. I had friends saying, “you should work as a relationship therapist”, jokingly calling me “Dr. Love”. Back then, I put this thought aside.
In 2020, I moved to Paris. In the span of a few months, both my lovers left me, I realized I had made a wrong choice in my education journey, and I was feeling alienated by the place I lived. My whole world collapsed, which led me into a heavy episode of depression. I discovered the depths of darkness one can go through. I took a lot of drugs, including experimental ones such as research chemicals. At the same time, I was enrolled in a gender studies program, and was going through a liberating transition in my sexuality and gender. Overall, this was chaos, I was feeling lost, not having control over my life. Today, I am so, so much better. I have come to find peace and stability. I cultivate a rich, secure and fulfilling sentimental life. With the wisdom acquired from all the crazy shit I went through, I feel like I fully deserve the title of Dr Love©.
Back then, I went to see a couple therapists, mostly freudo-lacanian old pricks who struck me as being totally unqualified to address my issues. Our sessions quickly turned less into therapy, and rather more into a study of how they were trying to fit me into their little scripts, reduce the complexity of my being into their exhausted schemas. At the same time, my journey into becoming a woman was also marked with my incursions into witchcraft. This led me to navigate a complex psychic dissociation, understanding some of my experiences either or both as signs of magic, or psychosis.
Informed notably by the teachings of the ontological turn in anthropological science, I realized there was a need for psychotherapeutic methods that didn’t rely on normative taxonomies, and integrated contextual, situated worldviews and concepts. This approach would thus be inherently experimental, a well prepared and rigorous but ultimately improvisational dance in the field of language. Since then, I have been most entirely dedicated to a deep study of the psyche. I wanted to understand what I went through, and how to avoid the most painful parts for others. I’m invested in the notions of communitarian knowledge and care. This is why I theorize the queer club as a place of communal healing, giving space to a popular, organic culture of drama therapy, focused on the symbolic resolution of trauma.
My work led me to become a philosopher of delirium, studying matters of cosmology and understanding the role of LGBT subjectivity in the western symbolic order. In the last years I also became a club queen, a journey documented in my online memoire TRASHQUEEN. Using the queer club as an ethnographic terrain and dancing for 15+ hours every week-end also gave me first class understanding of how humans function. While I’m working on publications to share this acquired wisdom, I realized I could also bring this expertise in another way to care for my community: individual therapy.
This is a side practice from my literary and artistic work. Therapy with me therefore doubles as a form of patronage. By paying me, you contribute to the financing of my contribution to the fields of art and philosophy. I work with transsexuals and queers, straights only if willing to spend extra. I develop my own approach and method based on an extensive study of psychoanalytic and schizoanalytic theory, as well as contemporary frameworks of psychotherapy. I’m interested in assemblage logic and crafting your own reality, rather than fitting you into preexisting subjectivity models.
This approach is also informed by contemporary neuroscience. As a materialist and pragmatic healer, I focus on neuroplasticity and transformation of the self. This might involve finding the drug diet that works for you. My work is also informed by somatic approaches and body-mind therapy. Sessions might go beyond language and involve exercises in space, guided meditation, touch, and hypnosis. Every therapeutic engagement is a new, experimental relation focused on psychic healing. There is no universal recipe for well-being. Finally, my work is informed by queer and feminist ethics. I am dedicated to change the world, that includes healing and shifting away from a patriarchal civilization. This also means crafting a space exempted from any sort of judgment. All kinks are welcome.
While I was diving into psychology, I started realizing how much bullshit one could find in that field. After focusing for years on the other disciplines of social sciences, where one can still find a certain impartiality and rigor linked to scientific ethos, I became horrified by how much the literature about the psyche was corrupted, gangrenous with private and trademarked, commercial interests, guru-style delirium, and new age absurdities, not to mention the catastrophic effects of lobbying from the pharmaceutical industry. I also started to recognize successful models such as cognitive behavioral therapy as paradigmatic to neoliberal times, when people just need to continue to function as workers in highly dysfunctional and alienating environments. My work as a therapist is therefore political: I do this because I find it important to challenge this status quo.
I don’t have academic training in psychology, however I studied the field extensively. I read hundreds of books and essays for my research. I am a published author of queer theory. I am extremely versed in (post-)structuralist philosophy. For example, I organized a reading group around the work of Deleuze and Guattari. My last book engages extensively with contemporary lacanian theory. I’m also well-read in somatic approaches and cognitive neuroscience. I feel qualified to establish diagnosis and offer treatment, especially in relation to systemic issues related to gender and sexuality. However, that means there are some instances in which I can’t engage, murderous/suicidal tendencies being the most evident. My services are offered on a “no guarantee” principle. There is no safe space.
Your profile:
I offer an experimental protocol, always in construction. What you can expect:
Ultimately, my goal is for people to be happy. One of my mantras as a privileged bitch is to never do anything motivated by money. Also, I lived with the spell of the first name Robin for more than twenty years. Striving for social justice is my destiny. In the end, it is about well-being. If after reading this, you think I can help with yours, feel free to contact me.
Smile,
Astrée✨
Addendum/disclaimer: this page is a draft. I haven’t fully resolved the legal implications in offering such kind of therapeutic service. In the meantime, we could call it coaching or whatever, but the point is that this should not be considered as replacement or alternative to a medical treatment. Rather, it should be understood as a personalized, experimental artistic performance. If you consider your mental instability to be potentially physically harmful to yourself or others, please seek professional help.
Et pour les queeros francophones: je préfère l'anglais car c'est une langue moins genrée, meilleur outil de soin pour tout ce qui a trait au genre et autres douleurs liées à la sexualité. Cela dit, si vous n'êtes pas à l'aise dans cette langue impériale, ou si pour une autre raison cela fait sens, nous pouvons travailler en français.
