Psychoanalysis is a type of therapy in which therapist and patient meet more frequently--typically three to four times per week--to help the patient access parts of themselves that are contributing to their suffering and which may be out of reach in a lower frequency treatment. ​

 

In analysis, the patient is asked to speak as freely as they can about whatever comes to mind, and the therapist listens very closely. The therapist listens to what is said, to what isn't said, to what is cut short, to the kinds of detours that are taken, to what is felt in the room and to what isn't. This kind of listening helps create a felt invitation of an unusual kind: an invitation to a supported encounter with one's unconscious. The patient in analysis is speaking into a shared space that is not conversational in a conventional sense, but in which the patient is aware of being accompanied. 

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Weekly therapy can do this too for some, but in an analytic treatment, aspects of the setting like the frequency and sometimes laying on the analytic couch, help to shift the treatment from one that is more intellectualized or cautiously regulated by the patient, to one that is more open, surprising, and in which what is at stake in the decision to seek help and embark on a treatment is more emotionally alive for the patient.

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If you are drawn to psychodynamic therapy and have felt that weekly therapy did not open up the kind of space you needed to approach your core issues, psychoanalysis may be worth exploring.​

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I am a psychoanalyst in training, or psychoanalytic candidate, at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston, an institute accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association. In order to become a psychoanalyst, I take four years of coursework, conduct analyses supervised by experienced psychoanalysts, and undergo my own personal analysis with a psychoanalyst.​

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