What is Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy?
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is one of the many descendants of psychoanalysis, the famous ‘talking cure’ that was invented and promulgated by Sigmund Freud about a century ago. Psychoanalytic therapy (also sometimes referred to as Psychodynamic therapy) aims to help people who want to delve deeper into their psyche and gain valuable understandings about their lives but, for one reason or another, would not best benefit from intensive psychoanalysis (i.e., four or five sessions per week, with the patient lying on a couch).
What is unique about Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy?
Some premises and positions of psychoanalytic therapy that distinguish it from other types of therapy are as follows:
Alongside our everyday, conscious awareness, our mind has a parallel life of its own that is normally out of our conscious reach. We may have some explanations for what we want or don’t want, whom we like or dislike, and why we do what we do, but most of the time we are unaware of the real, unconscious forces that affect our feelings, thoughts, decisions, and actions.
The early years of our lives play a crucial role in shaping our unconscious minds. This doesn't mean that we are solely defined by what we have been through in the past. Abundant empirical evidence on the effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy indicates that we are more than just helpless victims of our childhood. However, during our development, we form cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, and behavioral patterns that continue to influence our lives today. These patterns are often the root cause of our difficulties and may need to be changed.
Because all of us have unconscious minds and have formed unconscious patterns in life, we need a companion (in the case of psychotherapy, a therapist) who can observe and bring to our awareness what we most frequently miss (our ‘blind spots’).
Since our emotional and behavioral patterns are formed through many years and in response to a myriad of interpersonal experiences, it takes time to become aware of them and grasp the full range of their influence. That is one reason why psychoanalytic therapy doesn't have a set number of sessions; it is usually long-term and open-ended.
However hard it may be, curiosity about our psychological suffering could prove useful. It may sound odd, but oftentimes what urges us to seek help is not the most important issue we need to address. This is not to say that our symptoms are not important. Depression, anxiety, obsessions, relational conflicts, identity confusion, and substance-related problems are among the most common psychic ailments that afflict many of us at some point or other in our lives. It's only natural to want them gone. However, most of the time they are just the tip of an iceberg, worthy of closer examination. This spirit of constant curiosity, of not readily taking symptoms and issues at face value, is the hallmark of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Some people prefer to acquaint themselves with a therapy before embarking on it. If you're one of them, welcome to this page! As someone who is considering psychotherapy, it's your right to have a general idea about what you're about to experience. To honor this right, I aim to outline psychoanalytic therapy and highlight its main distinctions from other therapies.
At the same time, I believe nothing compares to experiencing therapy firsthand to fully understand what it's like and decide whether or not it's for you. If you've never been in psychoanalytic therapy, you may want not to bias yourself too much with preconceptions but to approach it with the openness and curiosity of a debutant. Remember that each course of therapy is, first and foremost, a unique human encounter. In this encounter, you and your therapist will embark on and navigate your journey toward understanding and healing in a way no one has ever done.