Our Approach to Treatment
We work from a contemporary relational psychoanalytic framework. So, what exactly does this mean? Psychoanalytic therapies emphasize the role of unconscious processes underlying our suffering. Our symptoms are often the most visible signs of conditions that exist under the surface. In order to resolve our problems, we must understand what our symptoms might be signaling to us about ourselves and our relation to others, where they came from, and how they fit within the context of our personalities. By acknowledging the automatically felt and often unconsidered dimensions of our lives, psychoanalytic therapies seek deeper, more meaningful changes in people. In addition to reducing symptoms, the kind of changes that often occur from this approach to therapy are more expansive and include greater inner freedom, inner resources, and inner capacities to create a life that is more rich and more meaningful. These are the kinds of changes we are interested in helping you foster.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Distinctives
Psychoanalytic therapy is an experiential kind of therapy requiring a higher level of training for the therapist. It requires patients be willing to examine painful feelings and thoughts and to explore the history of how problems developed (including one's family history and traumas that may have occurred). It also emphasizes examining the ways people feel, protect themselves against feelings, distort perceptions of the world, and make meanings of experience that often perpetuate problems. Contemporary approaches to this kind of therapy are much different from stereotyped depictions on TV and film. Instead of a neutral, silent therapist acting as a blank screen, the therapy feels warm, collaborative, and improvisational. The therapist is less like a teacher and more like an experienced guide asking questions and deepening experiences that emerge in session towards the aim of clarifying and elaborating experience. In addition to providing significant relief from symptoms of distress and impairment, psychoanalytic therapy can help people make core changes that are often lifelong.
Where does psychoanalytic therapy fit in context with other approaches? In many ways, the roots of talk therapy began with psychoanalysis. Shorter-term, solution-focused models of treatment arose over the years in an effort to reduce healthcare costs and make therapeutic change more efficient. As a result, there are now many therapy modalities emphasizing a variety of specific goals such as reducing symptoms, learning particular techniques and skills, or modifying behavior. Many of these kinds of therapies tend to be directive and structured, place the therapist in a teacher role, and utilize advice and education as primary agents of change. Such focused, short-term approaches are helpful for some people pursuing specific goals. For others, these approaches do not adequately address the complexity of the person in their entirety - their personality dynamics, developmental history, emotional life, etc. For these people, therapy is more effective and benefits greatly from the addition of a psychoanalytic backdrop that can speak to the unique role our personalities play in our experience of our symptoms, ultimately making for treatment gains that last well beyond the end of the therapy (Click here for more information about the robust evidence base for psychodynamic therapies).
Where does psychoanalytic therapy fit in context with other approaches? In many ways, the roots of talk therapy began with psychoanalysis. Shorter-term, solution-focused models of treatment arose over the years in an effort to reduce healthcare costs and make therapeutic change more efficient. As a result, there are now many therapy modalities emphasizing a variety of specific goals such as reducing symptoms, learning particular techniques and skills, or modifying behavior. Many of these kinds of therapies tend to be directive and structured, place the therapist in a teacher role, and utilize advice and education as primary agents of change. Such focused, short-term approaches are helpful for some people pursuing specific goals. For others, these approaches do not adequately address the complexity of the person in their entirety - their personality dynamics, developmental history, emotional life, etc. For these people, therapy is more effective and benefits greatly from the addition of a psychoanalytic backdrop that can speak to the unique role our personalities play in our experience of our symptoms, ultimately making for treatment gains that last well beyond the end of the therapy (Click here for more information about the robust evidence base for psychodynamic therapies).
The Therapeutic Relationship
The therapeutic relationship is fundamental to the change process in psychoanalytic therapy. The therapy relationship provides an experiential relationship where we can express and discover our dynamics with another who is trained and able to help us understand them. As we participate in the therapeutic process, our unconscious dynamics naturally emerge within the therapeutic relationship and become expressed through the subtleties of our interactions with one another. These have also been referred to as our "automatic thoughts" or "schemas" in other theoretical perspectives. Not only what you say, but how you say it, your tone of voice, your body language, the things you emphasize, the things you neglect, etc. - all of these factors fill the room and comprise the unconscious domain of your communication. As this kind of information populates the field between the patient and therapist, it becomes available for conscious reflection within the therapeutic relationship. Both patient and therapist can work together to help the patient understand his/her/their personality dynamics and create new ways of experiencing life.
Discussing what transpires at this person-to-person level between therapist and patient is extremely important to effecting lasting change. Because of this, you are encouraged to tell anything you have observed about the process between you and your therapist as it unfolds at any time during therapy. The way dynamics show up in the interactions between us in therapy offers us important information we can both use to help you understand yourself and the problems you're facing.
In this way, psychoanalytic therapy is an experiential therapy. The heart of the work occurs in session, much like the work of physical therapy occurs during appointments. Because of this, regular visits often help facilitate the process of change. Learn more about the importance of the therapy relationship.
Discussing what transpires at this person-to-person level between therapist and patient is extremely important to effecting lasting change. Because of this, you are encouraged to tell anything you have observed about the process between you and your therapist as it unfolds at any time during therapy. The way dynamics show up in the interactions between us in therapy offers us important information we can both use to help you understand yourself and the problems you're facing.
In this way, psychoanalytic therapy is an experiential therapy. The heart of the work occurs in session, much like the work of physical therapy occurs during appointments. Because of this, regular visits often help facilitate the process of change. Learn more about the importance of the therapy relationship.
Typical Outcomes
Since people are complicated beings, and the process of change in therapy is incredibly nuanced, subtle, and complex, nobody can can really predict the kinds of changes you will experience as a result of engaging in therapy. That being said, there is overwhelming evidence that psychotherapy significantly decreases psychological suffering and improves quality of life for people engaged in it. The kinds of changes we have often witnessed among our clients engaged in this kind of work include:
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