Psychoanalysis is a form of psychotherapy that is intended to help people address problematic patterns of behavior rooted in a person's earliest relationships with his or her parents. There are many different schools of psychoanalytic theory. However, there are several core features that characterize psychoanalysis and differentiate it from other forms of therapy.

 

Therapeutic Structure

Psychoanalysis is by definition an intensive form of therapy, involving 3 to 4 sessions weekly.  There are several reasons for this. A more intensive treatment provides a certain degree of emotional containment for a person who is exploring deep and often painful emotional experience. The frequency of treatment also facilitates continuity between sessions and enhances the collaborative exploration of the meaning of the things that are on a person's mind. Finally, the treatment frequency helps the therapist and the person seeking care identify and explore ("analyze") the thoughts and feelings that emerge between them over the course of the therapy.​​​

​Therapeutic Process

​The ​therapeutic process is guided by the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis: A person should say everything that is on his or her mind and leave nothing out, no matter how confusing, nonsensical, strange, or apparently vacuous it may be. This may include reflections on the present, memories of the near of distant past, daydreams, fantasies, dreams, or observations and feelings about the relationship between the person in treatment and the therapist. The abiding principle is that everything on a person's mind has meaning that deserves to be reflected upon. This free associative way of communicating is challenging because it entails casting aside the conventional mode of talking in everyday life. One of the psychoanalyst's roles is to help foster a person's ability to free associate without fear of judgment and criticism. Sometimes, but not always, this process may be facilitated by having a person make use of the analytic couch. Talking while lying down on a couch (as opposed to face-to-face treatment) can sometimes help a person to feel less inhibited by feelings of shame or guilt in order to talk about things that are most emotionally intense and meaningful.

Therapeutic Principles

There are two defining features of psychoanalytic therapy. First, psychoanalytic therapy recognizes that every person's access to the deepest layers of the self is limited by psychological defenses. That is to say, every person guards against reflecting on painful emotional truth through various forms of self-concealment (avoidance strategies) which need to be analyzed in order to reveal the "unconscious" parts of a person's mind. A second pillar of psychoanalysis is the assumption that every person's relationships are influenced by deeply embedded models of how a relationship is supposed to work that have their roots in the earliest relationships with the parenting figures of a person's childhood ("transferences").​​​

Therapeutic Goals

Ultimately, the goals of any analysis are unique to the person seeking such treatment. Generally speaking, however, a central goal of most psychoanalyses is to enhance the development of a person's reflective self. This means developing a greater ability to make use of language in order to communicate about oneself (particularly about painful emotional states, or affects), rather than communicating through impulsive action or through more complex problematic behavioral patterns. Overall, the aim of psychoanalysis is to help a person achieve what Freud felt was the defining goal of every therapy -- to help a person to be able to work and love.​​​

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