Psychoanalytic Therapy
“The life of a healthy individual is characterized by fears, conflicting feelings, doubts, frustrations, as much as by the positive features. The main thing is that the man or woman feels he or she is living his or her own life, taking responsibility for action or inaction, and able to take credit for success and blame for failure. In one language it can be said that the individual has emerged from dependence to independence, or to autonomy.”
― D.W. Winnicott, Home Is Where We Start From: Essays by a Psychoanalyst
Behind each of your symptoms lies a story that is waiting to be told. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is the vehicle through which you will learn to tell your story. It creates a protected space wherein you can make sense of and find meaning in even the vaguest experiences of being in the world.
Long-term problems require long-term solutions. Short-term treatments like CBT aim at managing surface symptoms whereas psychoanalytic psychotherapy seeks to modify underlying internal dynamics that produce those symptoms.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be understood as a more holistic approach to treatment targeting the root causes of surface symptoms such as depression, anxiety, trauma, lack of self-esteem etc. The benefit of embarking in an open-ended long-term commitment is that the results are long-lasting and your quality of being in the world improves substantially.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy entails a very specific way of listening that has its roots in the theories and practice of psychoanalysis, which originated with Sigmund Freud and emphasizes unconscious motivation and how it impacts our conscious life. Freud also recognized the importance of our early experiences and how they tend to re-appear in our adult life. This is a very simplistic explanation of a very rich school of thought that has been evolving over a century. The goal of psychoanalytic psychotherapy is to increase our awareness into our feelings and thoughts. As Socrates taught us centuries ago, the examined life is worth living (a twist on an old classic).
Through psychoanalytic listening, I can help you increase your understanding of the meaning behind your symptoms and how they affect your general functioning. I can help you develop a more nuanced and sophisticated awareness of your feelings and actions, and of your symptoms and triggers.
By listening intently and with curiosity to your thoughts, feelings, dreams, and actions, I can help you understand yourself better and satisfy your curiosity about your internal world.
In my experience, having the ability to help you articulate your struggles and make your symptoms more knowable and intelligible puts you in a position of power, and it typically leads to both an increased sense of control and a more rewarding sense of freedom.