Pia Hylén Psychologist

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Portugal
Lisbon
Pia Hylén Psychologist

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English-speaking psychologist and psychoanalyst in greater Lisbon area, Setúbal and Azeitão. On-line and in vivo.

Helping expats, nomads, English and French speakers with anxiety, depression or burnout symptons - adapting to a new culture and lifestyles. I’m a psychologist trained at UC Berkeley, University of Copenhagen, Cornell Medical Center, and École de la Cause Freudienne, Paris. I specialize in helping people clarify their emotions and transform the way they connect with others. Whether you're facing life challenges, feeling overwhelmed, or seeking to understand yourself better, therapy provides a space to gain clarity and develop solutions. In therapy, we’ll examine issues together, looking at specific elements while considering the bigger picture. My approach supports you in bridging the gap between your thoughts and emotions, integrating these parts to create a more harmonious, authentic self. If you’re ready to explore change, I’m here to help.

14/10/2026

At midnight in Monti, Rome is still dreaming with its eyes wide open. We gather, drink, laugh, desire — as if we could momentarily escape the lack that drives us. Perhaps this is what makes life so irresistible: not the promise of satisfaction, but the desire that keeps bringing us back into the streets, among strangers, beneath the ancient gaze of the city.

03/10/2026

A recurring nightmare is rarely just a message waiting to be decoded. In Lacanian terms, it may be the return of something that has not yet found its place in words — a conflict that insists on repeating because it has not been symbolised. Perhaps the question is not simply “What does this dream mean?” but “What is it that keeps returning, and what does it want from me?”

30/09/2026

Hygge is often translated as coziness, but perhaps it is something more subtle: the pleasure of creating a space in which being together is enjoyed.
The ordinary becomes meaningful when it is enjoyed together.
Perhaps hygge is a small Lacanian reminder: pleasure is never quite as private as we imagine. It comes alive in the presence of the Other.

26/09/2026

Toska — that particular Russian word for a deep, almost spiritual anguish: a longing for something you cannot quite name.
Lacan might say that the difficulty is precisely there: desire is born around a lack that no object can finally fill. We search, we attach, we lose, we begin again — and still there is that strange ache.
Perhaps Toska is what it feels like when desire knows something that consciousness cannot yet put into words.

24/09/2026

The Giving Tree is not a children's book. It is a wound. It is a mirror. It is the most controversial, most beloved, most hated, and most argued-about picture book ever published. Shel Silverstein wrote it in 1964, and it was rejected by publishers who found it too sad, too ambiguous, too disturbing for children. It has since sold over ten million copies, been translated into more than thirty languages, and been read at weddings, funerals, and bedtime for over half a century. It is a book about a tree and a boy. It is a book about love and sacrifice. It is a book about codependency and exploitation. It is a book about mothers and children, about giving and taking, about the terrible, beautiful, destructive nature of unconditional love. It is all of these things. That is why we cannot stop talking about it.

The story is simple. A tree loves a boy. The boy plays in her branches, eats her apples, sleeps in her shade. The tree is happy. The boy grows. He wants money. She gives him her apples to sell. He wants a house. She gives him her branches to build one. He wants a boat. She gives him her trunk to sail away. He leaves. He comes back as an old man. There is nothing left of her but a stump. He sits on it. The tree is happy. That is the story. That is the whole story. It takes five minutes to read. It takes a lifetime to understand.

What makes the book so powerful is its ambiguity. Is the tree a hero or a victim? Is the boy a monster or just a child? Is this a story about the beauty of selflessness or a warning about the danger of giving everything away to someone who will never appreciate it? Some readers see a beautiful parable of a mother's love. Others see a disturbing portrait of a relationship in which one person gives everything and the other takes without ever saying thank you. Silverstein refused to explain. He said it was a book about a tree and a boy. He said he did not write it for children. He said he did not write it for adults. He just wrote it. And he left us to argue about it forever.

BOOK: https://link.amazon/B0e81WN54

22/09/2026

Saudade is a strange form of absence: what is gone continues to have a place in us. We don't simply miss what we lost—we sometimes desire precisely because it is no longer there. Perhaps saudade is the Portuguese name for learning to live with the gap.

20/09/2026

“Just be yourself” — as if there were only one of you waiting patiently to be discovered.
But we are divided subjects: pulled by different desires, identifications, demands and voices. Sometimes the difficulty is not finding your “true self”, but figuring out which voice is speaking — and to whom.
Perhaps the question is not Who am I really?
But: What is it that I am saying when I say “I”?
And if that gets confusing, we can have a chat about it.

11/09/2026

Perhaps the phone is not the problem.
Perhaps it is simply a very efficient accomplice.
It keeps offering us something to look at, while quietly protecting us from the uncomfortable moment when there is nothing left to look at but ourselves.
Lacan might say: the subject is always looking for the next signifier.
And your thumb is doing an excellent job of producing them. 😉

08/09/2026

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about desire is that it survives satisfaction.
We can change the job, the relationship, the city, the people around us — and still the gap remains.
Not because we have chosen wrongly, but because there is no final object that can make us whole.
The question is not: How do I get rid of what is missing?
But: What do I do with the fact that something will always be missing?

02/09/2026

You didn't forget what you were looking for.
You forgot who you were in the other room.
You cross a threshold and the intention vanishes.
This is what Lacan calls the effect of the signifying cut.
The doorway functions as a bar. On one side, you were a subject organized by a desire: "I will go get X". On the other side, the Symbolic reconfigures itself. New room, new scene, new Other.
The unconscious shows you the truth: desire is not inside you. It is sustained by the place you were in.

Endereço

Rua Pinheiro Chagas 48, 4
Lisbon
1050-179

Website

http://2piahylen.com/

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