What is Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy?

Psychoanalytic work differs from other forms of therapy in that it is grounded in the concept of the unconscious – the drives, wishes, ideas, fantasies and conflicts occurring outside of our everyday, conscious awareness. This can help us understand, for example, feelings which don’t seem to have an obvious, rational cause. Or it may explain a tendency to repeat patterns of behaviour or patterns in relationships which a person would rather stop.

In this therapy you will be asked to ‘free-associate’, meaning to speak as freely as you can about whatever you are thinking of at that moment. Through a particular psychoanalytic form of listening and interest in what is being said it is possible to identify and learn something about the unconscious aspects of what is happening. Amongst other things, psychoanalytic work is interested in how early relationships and experience lay the ground for later tendencies, repetitions and conflicts. It is also interested in how parts of the self can be expressed in disguised and symbolic forms, such as in repeating behaviours or in dreams.

Psychoanalytic work is open-ended, meaning that we would begin meeting regularly and continue to do so until we choose to stop, rather than meeting for a set number of sessions. The work is also unstructured, meaning that there is not a set agenda of topics to be discussed in each session; rather, you speak freely about what is on your mind. The work usually seeks to address long-standing difficulties or questions a person may have about themselves, and aims to bring about gradual, incremental – but significant – shifts in thinking, feeling and relating. It does not offer quick solutions, advice or behavioural techniques – these may well be helpful to a person in their own way, but are usually available through self-help guides or through more directive forms of counselling.

There is the option of lying on an analytic couch in my consulting room for sessions, rather than sitting. This is not essential, but it can be helpful in facilitating ‘free association’, helping one access deeper aspects of the mind in a less inhibited way.