Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist & Clinical Counsellor

Itay Lahav is a Senior Registered Clinical Counsellor, Registered Clinical Psychotherapist, Mental Health Practitioner, and Supervisor with Advanced Clinical Training (NZAP), a rigorous multi-year programme in psychodynamic psychotherapy and clinical supervision. Since 2003, he has worked with adults, adolescents, and families across a broad range of emotional and psychological difficulties. Clients may come to Itay feeling stuck in recurring emotional or relationship patterns, distressed by symptoms they do not fully understand, or seeking a deeper sense of meaning and direction in their lives.

As a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist specialising in depth-oriented psychotherapy, Itay helps people understand not only their symptoms but also the unconscious patterns that shape their emotions, relationships, and life choices. While symptom relief is important, lasting change often emerges through developing a deeper understanding of ourselves and the hidden influences that shape our lives.
While many therapies focus primarily on managing symptoms, depth-oriented psychotherapy goes further by exploring recurring life patterns, relationship and attachment difficulties, trauma, anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and questions of meaning and purpose. Through reflecting on formative experiences, relationships, unconscious patterns, and dreams, clients can develop deeper insight into themselves and the difficulties they face. Dreams and recurring patterns can offer valuable insights into our inner lives and may form an important part of the therapeutic process.

Drawing on psychoanalytic psychotherapy, EMDR, depth psychology, and integrative therapeutic approaches, Itay offers both short-term focused interventions and longer-term psychotherapy tailored to each person’s needs and pace. His aim is to provide a reflective, confidential, and supportive therapeutic space where clients can develop greater self-understanding, emotional capacity, freedom, authenticity, and lasting psychological change.

At the heart of Itay’s work is a spirit of curiosity, collaboration, and respect for each person’s unique journey. Therapy invites a deeper awareness of what may be operating outside conscious awareness and creates an opportunity for meaningful and enduring change.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. The shadows that you ignore eventually become the life that runs you.”

Itay’s work is grounded in a holistic view that mind and body are interconnected. Drawing on psychoanalytic (depth) and integrative psychotherapy, sessions explore the underlying meanings of symptoms rather than treating them at the surface. By reflecting on formative experiences, relationships, unconscious patterns, and dreams, clients are supported to gain insight that can reshape present difficulties. This process unfolds in a confidential, steady, and supportive space that balances compassion with clear therapeutic focus.

In practice, Itay offers both focused, time-limited work and longer-term therapy, tailored to each person’s needs and pace. The aim is to help clients build emotional capacity, improve relationships, and move toward a more coherent and meaningful life.

At the core of Itay’s philosophy is curiosity and collaboration. The work invites clients to become more aware of what operates outside conscious view. Itay strives to create a reliable therapeutic relationship where genuine change can take root and endure.