Psychoanalysis — with tarot as a tool
Between words and symbols, psychoanalysis and therapeutic tarot reveal what the soul keeps silent.
Cristina Neres, psychoanalyst, clinically trained at the IBPC. Sessions online or in person, in English or Portuguese.
50 minutes to an hour · online or in person · psychoanalysis $90 · tarot consultation $75
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Patterns that repeat
The unconscious speaks through patterns, emotions, dreams, and symbols.
When we bring awareness to what has been hidden, we transform unconscious repetition into conscious choice.
- You change partners and the same story starts up again under a new name.
- Two paths, months of weighing them up — and a suspicion that fear is talking louder than desire.
- Everything's working, and you still have no idea where any of it is going.
- The voice in your head is harder on you than you'd let anyone else be.
- Something difficult that ended long ago still runs your reactions, without asking permission.
If you recognised yourself in any of those lines, that's what we talk about — slowly, because that's how it works.
Tarot doesn't read your future. It throws light on your present.
Inside the session
Listening first. A card comes in when it helps, not as a ritual.
No preparation, no ceremony, no right thing to say. You turn up and talk.
- 1
You book
You choose the format — psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis with tarot, or a one-off consultation — and a time that fits your day. Online or in person, in English or Portuguese.
- 2
The first few minutes: checking in
Five to ten minutes for you to tell me what stood out in your week and how it landed. Messy is fine. That's where we start from.
- 3
The middle: the deep work
Real listening, and questions that guide. In the tarot format, the image of the card comes in to focus what's being felt — as a mirror, never as a verdict.
- 4
The last few minutes: closing
Sometimes something practical to take with you: a breathing or grounding exercise for tense moments; sometimes a relaxation practice with visualisation to repeat at home.
Not fortune-telling, not a medical clinic
What the session is — and what it doesn't replace.
What the session is
- A psychoanalytic process: clinical listening, with regularity and with time.
- Time set aside for you, without judgement and without rushing — and no one performing wisdom at you.
- Tarot used as projective material, when it helps give shape to what's hard to name.
- The same rigour in every card and in every silence.
What it isn't
- It isn't divination: I don't predict the future and I don't work with dates.
- I don't promise a cure, guaranteed relief, or change by a certain date.
- It isn't medical or psychiatric care, and it doesn't replace treatment you're already having.
- It isn't an emergency service. If you're in crisis or at risk, seek immediate help.
In crisis or at risk right now? Don't wait for a session — the 24-hour helplines for Australia and Brazil are at the foot of this page.
Three services
Psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis with tarot, or a one-off consultation.
The first two are a process: you come regularly and, little by little, patterns show up that you may not have known were there. It takes time, and that's rather the point. The tarot consultation is a single session, for one specific thing. All of them run 50 minutes to an hour.
Before you go
When it fits, you leave with something in your hands — not just the conversation.
That's what the end of the session can be for: a simple breathing exercise, a relaxation practice, or a visualisation to repeat at home. Nothing elaborate. Small enough to fit into an ordinary Tuesday.
Online and in-person sessions
Online from wherever you live — or in person, if you're nearby.
I've been in Australia for nineteen years, now in New South Wales, and I work in English and in Portuguese. Many of the people I see are here; some are on the other side of the world, where the distance turns out to be a time difference and nothing more. If you'd rather be in the same room, that's an option too — the address comes with your booking confirmation.
Australia
I work on Sydney time — and this is where in-person sessions happen.
Brazil
Sydney runs 13 hours ahead of Brasília — 14 between October and April.
Who you would be talking to
Psychoanalyst first. Thirty years of tarot as a symbolic language.
I'm Cristina Neres, Brazilian, and Cris Astrall is the name I practise under. I have lived in New South Wales, Australia, for nineteen years, and I work from here — online and in person, in English and Portuguese. I completed my clinical training in psychoanalysis at the IBPC. Before that: economics, human resources, fifteen years in public administration in Brazil, a decade of community work here. It was never a straight line.
This site is the practical side of Cris Astrall: here you can see the three session formats and the prices, book your session, write to me, and read the Open Letters — what I write between one session and the next. Commenting takes a nickname and nothing else, no account needed. If you'd rather sign in with your Google account, the site receives three things from Google: your name and your picture, which sign the comment, and your email, which is never published and only lets the site tell that the comment is yours. Nothing else is asked of Google — no contacts, no calendar, no Gmail, no files. None of it goes to advertising, and I don't sell it or share it.
Privacy and terms — what the site keeps, and what you can have deletedBring what you want to understand. Bring also the detours, the silences, and the things you struggle to name.
Both belong in a session. The first step is booking a time.
You don't have to arrive with the question ready.