Psychoanalysis (analysis) is a unique and intensive therapy based on the
observation that individuals are usually deeply unaware of the most significant factors that determine their emotions and
behavior, causing them to suffer. These unconscious factors sometimes manifest in the form of familiar symptoms, and at other
times as troubling personality traits, difficulties in relationships, or disturbances in mood and self-esteem.
Analysis is a safe, confidential, and
intimate partnership, in the course of which the patient becomes aware of the underlying sources of his or her difficulties—by
re-experiencing emotions, thoughts, memories, fantasies, dreams, images and sensations. Typically, the patient comes four
or five times a week, lies on a couch, and attempts to say everything that comes to mind. As the patient speaks, hints of
the unconscious gradually begin to appear—in certain repetitive patterns of behavior, in the subjects which the patient
finds hard to talk about, in the ways the patient relates to the analyst, etc.. These conditions create the analytic setting,
which permits the emergence of aspects of the mind not accessible during a once or twice a week talk therapy session. This
intensive treatment reveals how the unconscious affects current relationships and patterns of behavior and hopes to help the
individual deal better with the difficulties of his or her life. It also hopes to create lasting change with respect to the
unconscious forces which can be at the source of the individual's suffering.
Because these forces are unconscious, the advice of friends and family,
the reading of self-help books, the most determined efforts of will, and even many common forms of talk therapy, usually fail
to provide lasting relief.
