Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a group of psychological theories and methods based on the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud.

Psychoanalysis seeks to discover connections among the unconscious components of patients' mental processes. The analyst's goal is to help liberate the patient from unexamined or unconscious barriers of transference and resistance, that is, past patterns of relating that are no longer serviceable or that inhibit freedom.

Psychoanalysis was developed in the 1890s by Sigmund Freud as a treatment for patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. As a result of talking with these patients, Freud came to believe that their problems stemmed from culturally unacceptable, thus repressed and unconscious, desires and fantasies of a sexual nature.

Freud's patients would lie on this couch during psychoanalysis. The basic method of psychoanalysis is the transference and resistance analysis of free association. The patient is directed to say whatever comes to mind. Dreams, hopes, wishes, and fantasies are of interest, as are recollections of early family life. Generally the therapist simply listens, making comments only when an opportunity for insight on the part of the patient arises. In listening, the analyst attempts to maintain an attitude of empathic neutrality, a nonjudgmental stance designed to create a safe environment.

Many clinicians hold that psychoanalysis is not recommended in cases of serious psychological disruption, such as psychosis, suicidal depression, or severe untreated alcoholism. Such patients may be labeled "un-analyzable". More typical applications include treatment of clinical depression and personality disorders.

Some more recent forms of psychoanalysis seek to help patients gain self-esteem through greater trust of the self, overcome the fear of death and its effects on current behavior, and maintain several relationships that appear to be incompatible.

Psychoanalysis is believed to be most useful in dealing with ingrained problems of intimacy and relationship and for those problems in which established patterns of life are problematic. As a therapeutic treatment, psychoanalysis generally takes three to five meetings a week and requires the amount of time for natural or normal maturational change (three to seven years). Length of treatment varies but psychoanalysis generally lasts an average of 5-6 years or longer.

Training
Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, most psychoanalytic organizations have existed outside of the university settings.  Psychoanalytic training usually occurs at a psychoanalytic institute and may last approximately 4-10 years. Training includes coursework, supervised psychoanalytic treatment of patients, and personal psychoanalysis lasting 4 or more years.

Although the popularity of psychoanalysis was in decline during the 1980's and early 1990's, prominent psychoanalytic institutes have experienced an increase in the number of applicants in recent years.

The theories distinctive of psychoanalysis generally include the following hypotheses:

Human development is best understood in terms of changing objects of sexual desire.
The psychic apparatus habitually represses wishes, usually of a sexual or aggressive nature, whereby they become preserved in one or more unconscious systems of ideas.
Unconscious conflicts over repressed wishes have a tendency to manifest themselves in dreams, parapraxes ("Freudian slips"), and symptoms.
Unconscious conflicts are the source of neuroses.
Neuroses can be treated through bringing the unconscious wishes and repressed memories to consciousness in psychoanalytic treatment.

For Freud, the unconscious was a depository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects—it expresses itself in the symptom.

For more information about psychoanalysis and other therapeutic approaches, please click on the linked websites listed below.

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