Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a more intensive form of psychotherapy in which the analyst and the patient work together to study and eventually remove the unconscious factors causing symptoms and difficulties in relationship patterns and with oneself. It is most often helpful for problems of a longstanding nature, such as a personality trait, which, despite efforts to change, continues to cause problems in relationships and inner conflict.

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In psychoanalysis, the patient lies down. This method of communicating will access areas of the mind that will eventually appear within the transference, a central feature of the psychoanalytic method in which troublesome feelings, thoughts, conflicts, and impulses, are now experienced with your analyst.

 

Through this process, you and I will come to understand and eventually correct crucial misperceptions and crippling patterns of behavior and thinking. Through the intensity of this work, incapacitating patterns, symptoms, and one’s sense of self is eventually reworked and modified in deep and abiding ways such that symptoms and maladaptive patterns are no longer necessary in one’s functioning.

 

Psychoanalysis is different from psychotherapy in its intensity and frequency of sessions. In psychoanalytic treatment, it is typical to meet with me four or five times per week over a period of three to eight years. The longer duration of treatment reflects the more ambitious and extensive goals of psychoanalysis.