Who is analytical psychotherapy or psychoanalysis for?

Psychoanalysis or analytic psychotherapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy are psychotherapeutic techniques designed for anyone who wants to undergo a profound transformation, but is unable to do so on their own.

Most of the psychological difficulties we experience were once adaptive solutions to life's challenges. These solutions may have been costly, but they were solutions nonetheless. Difficulties arise when the old solutions no longer work, or become self-destructive, and we continue to apply them in spite of everything.

Those who need to understand in order to change or move forward, and who have the capacity for self-reflection, will turn to this form of therapy.

This in-depth work enables us to trace the archaic origins of the ills that haunt us, and thus resolve the inner conflicts that arise from them.

In the course of their development, individuals may have been arrested by a painful event, a disappointment, or a conflictual relationship with their loved ones. This unresolved past malaise can resurface in the present in various forms: anxiety, inhibition, depression, withdrawal, physical symptoms, etc.

Psychoanalysis aims to put into words these as yet unspoken forms of suffering, which may stem from a past trauma, a silence that has remained buried, as if forgotten (repressed), and which may have hindered evolution.

For a moment in your life, allow yourself to take a fresh look at your personal history, and shed light on the shadowy areas that are unconsciously at work in your relationships with others, whether in the family, as a couple, with friends or at work. Questions of existence are the business of psychoanalysis.

Therapy is a personal process. It's a choice we make for ourselves. It's not a question of changing, but of changing one's position in relation to one's history, insofar as it makes us suffer.

The advantage of psychoanalysis

The advantage of an analytic approach over brief cognitive-behavioral therapies is that it proposes to act on the causes of disorders, thus avoiding the reappearance of symptoms in other forms. In fact, thanks to the quality of its listening and the time devoted to the treatment, psychoanalysis makes it possible to tackle a wide variety of psychological sufferings that are not necessarily expressed through identifiable symptoms.

In this sense, it also concerns people who feel suffering that they don't understand, or who have the feeling of always repeating the same mistakes, or of experiencing multiple and varied relationship failures.

How do psychoanalysis sessions work?

Psychoanalysis is carried out in individual sessions in a psychoanalyst's office, and begins with preliminary discussions in which the analysand explains the reasons why he or she is suffering. This is an opportunity for the psychoanalyst to see how he or she can help.

The duration of each session is generally 50 minutes, but can be variable, allowing the therapist to make room for subjective time, deciding to stop the session at an essential and revealing formulation, or on the contrary to let a narrative thread come to an end that it would be a pity or too painful to leave in abeyance until the next session. As the session progresses, the psychoanalyst attempts to uncover the unconscious, which is transmitted through the language of the analysand. Words awaken memories, resurrect images and gradually lead to the awareness necessary for healing.

How long does an analysis take?

In all cases, psychotherapy is based on the patient's decision. To find the causes of their suffering, the origin of an illness - in other words, the origin of what is causing their symptoms - they will have to commit themselves over a certain period of time.

The frequency and regularity of sessions ensure the continuity of the therapeutic process. Whatever therapeutic framework is chosen, the frequency of sessions is fixed, as this regularity is essential to effectiveness. The discourse must both generate its own dynamic and integrate with the reality experienced by the patient between sessions. A weekly frequency is desirable.

The length of the analysis depends on a number of factors, including the initial problem and the scope of the work to be accomplished, resistance to the work and the analysand's personal objectives. Analysis is considered complete when the analysand "no longer suffers from his symptoms, and has overcome both his anxieties and his inhibitions", and when "the analyst judges that in the patient the repressed has been made conscious, the incomprehensible elucidated, the inner resistance overcome, and that there is no need to fear the repetition of the pathological processes in question" (Freud). So it's understandable that analytical work takes time. When the process is proceeding normally, the end of the analysis - i.e., the end of the joint work of the analysand and the analyst - is decided by mutual agreement between the two protagonists.

Is it for me?

Psychoanalysis isn't easy. Whatever a person's desire and need to be analyzed, they must be able to accept it. Not only must they have the time and financial resources, but they must also be able to withstand introspection, to handle the intensity of in-depth self-examination. She must be able to confront painful and unwanted feelings, thoughts and impulses. She must be willing and able to walk the painful and tortuous path to healing.

The ability to keep up with treatment is often referred to as psychological "resilience". To be in analysis, people suffering great emotional pain must, at the same time, be sufficiently resilient to be able to manage emotional pain. It can be difficult to know whether a person has the necessary resilience to undergo analysis at first, but we find out as we go along.

Psychological resilience often manifests itself in a person's tenacity to get better, in their determination to overcome obstacles that stand in their way, and in their desire to understand. Sometimes, it manifests itself indirectly as a kind of stubbornness or ardor.

Conclusion

Doing an analysis means taking the time, giving yourself the floor and placing a value on it. A value outside the social sphere, as in a necessary shift towards the intimate.

We often expect the psychoanalyst to know something. However, if there is knowledge, it's that of listening and shedding light on the affect at play. A bit like a flashlight that sheds light on what makes you tremble, what makes you truthful, so that you can finally make your own way. The psychoanalyst is there to help you realize your life. But it's up to you to make it happen.

What's more, in his position, the psychoanalyst renounces what he knows, and refrains from projecting theories or his own truths onto his patients. He remains within your own. We work with language, and it's not just words, it's also the trembling they induce, the wonder they procure... With the soul and the heart more precisely. In today's social discourse, it's often said that everything has to move fast, and that we have no time to lose. On the contrary, to undergo psychoanalysis is to be part of your own temporality, your own rhythm.

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