What Is Psychoanalysis?

When people ask what psychoanalysis is, they usually want to know about treatment. As a therapy, psychoanalysis is based on the observation that people are often unaware of many factors influencing their emotions and behavior. These unconscious factors may produce unhappiness through recognizable symptoms, troubling personality traits, difficulties at work or in relationships, or disturbances in mood and self-esteem. Because the underlying forces are unconscious, advice, self-help materials, and determined efforts of will may not provide lasting relief.

Psychoanalytic treatment explores how unconscious factors affect present relationships and patterns of behavior. It traces these influences to their origins, examines how they have developed over time, and helps the individual respond more effectively to the realities of adult life.

The Analytic Process

Analysis is an intimate partnership in which the patient becomes aware of the underlying sources of difficulties both intellectually and emotionally. Traditionally, the patient meets with the analyst several times each week and attempts to say whatever comes to mind. This setting can allow otherwise inaccessible aspects of mental life to emerge.

As the patient speaks, indications of unconscious conflicts may appear in repetitive behavior, subjects that are difficult to discuss, fantasies, dreams, and the ways the patient relates to the analyst. The analyst helps clarify these patterns, while the patient refines, corrects, rejects, or adds further thoughts and feelings.

Over time, patient and analyst repeatedly examine these insights and their expression in daily life. Their shared work aims not only to lessen disabling symptoms and modify restrictive patterns, but also to expand the patient’s capacity to work, love, relate to others, and experience a more enduring sense of freedom.