Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a collaborative, extended process of speaking and listening. By articulating your feelings, thoughts, memories and experiences, things begin to be said and heard differently, and, eventually, to be lived differently.
In speaking freely, again and again, and being heard, again and again, you learn how to hear yourself – you learn how to tune into the unconscious marks of past experiences, feelings, relationships, patterns, which voice themselves in your present.
Eventually, you may say things you didn’t know you knew – and this insight, this necessary upheaval, allows a new relationship to your self and your life to emerge.
Sessions take place at least once a week and last 50 minutes. The number of sessions per week varies between individuals and at different stages of treatment. Two or three times a week is not unusual.
Psychoanalysis works to recognize and engage with
an unconscious mental life which is alive, active, and often full of conflicts, and which constantly influences our thinking and behaviour. — Nina Coltart