People rarely contact me from Geneva because something has collapsed. They contact me because their quality of life has quietly become poor, in a life that from outside appears to be going extremely well.
The institutions, the banks and the missions concentrate a particular population: senior, capable, well paid, and often a long way from wherever they are from. The work is demanding and meaningful, the surroundings are orderly, and there is very little visible reason to be struggling. Which makes it considerably harder to say that you are.
There is also a practical reason people write to me rather than to somebody nearer. I am French, and I trained and practise in Britain. That combination is uncommon: French as a first language, with British clinical registration, doctoral training and twenty-five years in London. For someone who wants to do this work in French, but wants a clinician outside the French and Swiss professional worlds entirely, there are not many places to go.
Why this often surfaces late
Trauma frequently waits for safety. People manage remarkably well during a posting and then find, six months into a desk role, that sleep has gone, or that something ordinary produces a reaction out of all proportion.
That is not deterioration. It is what happens when the nervous system finally has the conditions to process something it had to postpone.
What EMDR does, honestly
Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing works on traumatic memory, and for a discrete event it can be remarkably effective and sometimes quick. A specific incident, properly processed, can stop generating distress.
Where the trauma was prolonged, or where it began in childhood, the picture is different and slower. There is no single memory to process. Anybody promising to resolve that quickly is selling something. More on the distinction, and why it matters.
Confidentiality, which in Geneva is the practical obstacle
Geneva’s international community is dense and its clinical community small. Being treated locally can mean being treated by somebody who knows your organisation, your director, or you by reputation. For many people that is the reason nothing happens.
Working with a clinician in London removes it. Nothing is held in Switzerland and nothing is disclosed to any employer or organisation without your consent, save for the narrow legal and safeguarding limits every registered practitioner is bound by, which are explained at the outset.
Practical
Geneva is one hour ahead of London. Sessions in English or French. UKCP-registered psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, HCPC-registered art psychotherapist, twenty-five years of practice and over twenty using EMDR. Both registers are public and can be checked independently.
EMDR therapy in London and trauma therapy.
Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Doctorate of Professional Practice at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.
How the work is delivered from here
All international sessions are by secure video, in English or French. Online therapy is not a reduced version of consulting room work: it is the format that lets weekly work survive living abroad, travelling, or relocating. Sessions run in United Kingdom hours, which suits most regions, and if your time zone makes none of it workable, say so when you enquire rather than assuming it rules you out.
For clinicians and treatment services
Dr Jacquet supervises clinical teams in private residential addiction treatment and in a private psychiatric hospital. For treatment centres, psychiatric units and group practices looking for external clinical supervision, including in places where no supervisor of this seniority is available locally, team supervision is also delivered by video. For individual practitioners, see clinical supervision.
Common questions
Do you work with humanitarian and field staff?
Yes, and it is one of the more common reasons people in Geneva make contact. Returning from a posting to an office where nobody has seen what you have seen is its own difficulty, quite apart from the events themselves.
Can we work in French?
Yes. I am French and practise in both languages, which for trauma matters more than people expect: the material tends to live in the language in which it happened.
How many sessions does EMDR take?
For a single traumatic event, sometimes remarkably few. Where the trauma was prolonged or began in childhood, the work is slower and broader, and anyone promising a quick resolution of that is overstating what is possible.