Why psychoanalysis
Engaging with psychoanalysis is a unique therapeutic journey of revisiting the past and rethinking the present. As a therapeutic process it enhances self-understanding and psychic resilience in the face of suffering, trauma and loss.
Through the joint psychic work of patient and therapist, psychoanalysis develops a better sense of agency and relatedness within a world of conflict and uncertainty. Being a paced and subtle process, psychoanalytic therapy addresses the particular history and needs of each individual.
When practiced with care and competence, it liberates forces of acceptance, inclusion, individuation and psychic change. It enhances creativity and gives the opportunity to feel more alive in one’s experience of the present.
Psychoanalysis and/or Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Psychoanalytic theory is based on the premise that there are conscious and unconscious aspects of our psychic experience, both of which shape our personal histories and our current identities.
It also holds that early childhood experiences have a crucial influence in our personal development and are the ground on which the healthy, as much as the traumatic aspects of our personalities and experience are founded.
In clinical practice we address both the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind as they unfold in the session. As analysts, we are trained to work with both spoken and unspoken emotions, fantasies, dreams and dream thoughts. We do not simply address the symtoms – we trace the threads which link current problems with the early personal history of each individual that seeks our assistance.
The choice between analysis on the couch or analytic therapy face-to-face depends on various factors and is up to the analyst’s clinical judgement to suggest the indicated treatment that would best benefit each person. A full psychoanalytic training from the part of the therapist is essential for a well-balanced assessment of the indicated therapeutic course of action.
