The Psychoanalytic Tradition

What To Expect

Psychoanalytic work prioritizes speaking and different ways of hearing what is said. The way we speak is often full of ambiguity. In understanding different meanings, one comes to new understandings and can feel a greater freedom in living and making choices. Speaking unties unconscious conflicts that cause suffering.

This kind of work assumes that all symptoms and life difficulties have a greater meaning. However, this meaning is far from obvious, especially at the beginning of a treatment. Therefore, therapeutic conversations are not limited to what is causing suffering now. It is taken as a given that all aspects of a person’s life have importance and impact current functioning. Likewise, one’s entire life is important to speak about, including early childhood and even infancy.

Most therapies today advertise quick solutions. They introduce coping skills, whether breathing exercises or acceptance practices, that always fall short. This is because they fail to intervene at the actual level of the symptom: its causes and the unconscious logic that sustains it. Psychoanalytic practice stays at this unconscious level and works by offering a new way to relate to the symptom, if not uproot it entirely.     

I invite you to speak. I invite you to do so in a safe environment in which I may challenge you, but always with tact. To find relief takes two people interested in new truths. I welcome you to join me.