What is Psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is a more intensive type of psychotherapy treatment aimed at addressing aspects of your mental life that operate outside your awareness. Psychoanalysis is unique in terms of its goals, objectives, and method of treatment. Many of the symptoms that bring people to therapy - such as anxiety or depression - are often the outermost layers of a problem that is more fundamental and that lies beyond our awareness. Difficulties with intimacy, feelings of inadequacy, conflict with dependence on others, indecisiveness, conflict with anger, conflicts with one's identity, and fear of the unknown are among a few examples of underlying conflicts giving rise to various symptoms. It not until these deeper conflicts are addressed that meaningful and lasting change can take place. Psychoanalysis is aimed at addressing these conflicts.

Psychoanalysis is an ambitious treatment. Many types of treatment are effective at achieving change in the short term. Psychoanalysis is unique in that it offers the possibility of change that endures far beyond the end of treatment. This is due to the fact psychoanalysis effects change at the very structure of one's personality, the "machinery" through which the work of our mental life operates. Rather than challenging negative self-talk, teaching better coping strategies, or coaching clients to feel more empowered, psychoanalysis helps reshape the very lenses through which we view ourselves and the world. Changes effected at this foundational level inevitably impact every aspect of our experience in the world and liberates us to live lives we choose rather than lives we feel fated to live out.

How Does Psychoanalysis Work?

Psychoanalysis requires a significant commitment for both the therapist and patient. Treatment consists of at least 3 sessions per week and may be expected to last 2-3 years or longer. During treatment, patients are instructed to say whatever comes to mind (e.g., free association) without censoring themselves and are typically reclined on the couch rather than sitting up as this posture often facilitates the process of free association. This method also facilitates the development and expression of the patient's problematic dynamics within the treatment relationship. By the patient's problematic dynamics emerging within a relationship in which the analyst is a direct participant, the analyst can not only help the patient better understand his or her dynamics, but can also effect changes in the operation of the patient's conflicts. The use of free association, the increased treatment frequency, and the analyst's specialized training in this process facilitate the possibility of effecting deeper changes in the patient's personality. Similar to the ways heating up metal allows it to become more malleable and take on a different form, the psychoanalytic method becomes the kind of emotional heat by which deeper and lasting changes may be effected.

Why Psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is considered one of the most effective types of treatment for effecting the deepest type of change. It not only has significant empirical evidence, but is often the most frequent type of treatment sought by therapists to deepen their understanding of themselves and to help them understand and embrace the wide spectrum of strong emotion that gets evoked in working with the wide variety of people they encounter in their work.

Psychoanalysis offers the greatest potential for helping you not only increase your understanding of yourself but helping you alter underlying aspects of your personality functioning in ways that can last a lifetime. Through psychoanalysis, you can better understand the ways you unconsciously defend yourself from your own thoughts and feelings. In so doing, you naturally develop a greater tolerance for distressing thoughts and feelings. This similarly results in greater flexibility and capacity to adapt to changing situations. Where before you were fixed in feeling one particular way in response to a situation, you now experience a greater range of feelings, which directly informs the range of actions now available to you. You also discover ways this internal conflict both interferes with your ability to actualize your potential and disrupts your relationships. These two dimensions - conflict in our relationship with ourselves and with others - influence almost every dimension of life, including our romantic and platonic relationships, our performance at work or school, our interests and activities outside of work, and our hopes and aspirations in life. Important facets of functioning that are often the central focus of other treatment approaches - such as emotion regulation, affect tolerance, and more adaptive thinking - are often the natural byproducts of a psychoanalytic treatment that is aimed at more ambitious goals of altering personality structure.