About Psychoanalysis

(A revised version of the "Learn About Psychoanalysis" page from the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society's website.)

What is Psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is essentially a therapeutic method developed by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud who worked from the late 19th century until his death just before WWII.

Since that time, Freud’s heirs have continued to develop, deepen, challenge, and revise its methods and theories. Beyond the clinic, psychoanalytic ways of thinking have influenced a wide variety of disciplines, from the humanities to the social sciences to the natural sciences.

The Unconscious

Psychoanalysis as a treatment method is based on the observation that people are often unaware of many of the factors that determine their emotions, behavior, dreams, and desires. These “unconscious” factors may be the source of considerable distress and unhappiness in the form of problematic symptoms, troubling behaviors, difficulties in work or relationships, or disturbances in mood and self-esteem.

Why Psychoanalysis?

People seek psychoanalysis for many reasons. People who are anxious or depressed, people who have repeated difficulties in relationships, people who have difficulty forming any relationships at all, or people who feel an unexplained emptiness in their lives can benefit significantly from psychoanalytic treatment. Psychoanalysis assumes that the suffering of the patient or "analysand" is rooted in the patient's unconscious.

The Transference, Dream Interpretation, Empathy

In the course of intensive psychoanalytic treatment, the relationship between the patient and the analyst will eventually reveal features deriving from the “unconscious internal world” of the patient and thus be made available for exploration. This is called “transference.”

As a result of this unique transference situation, it becomes possible for the analysand to understand and transform core patterns and experience meaningful change. Psychoanalysis involves the patient’s free association—working toward saying whatever comes to mind—as well as dream interpretation, analysis of defenses and conflicts, and other techniques.

Psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut emphasized the importance of the analyst's empathy toward the patient as the most powerful healing technique of the psychoanalytic approach to psychotherapy, which he called "analysis." For Kohut, empathy is a form of "internal scientific inquiry": "Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person."

For Kohut, empathy is not only the foundation of psychoanalysis; it is also the foundation of any serious inquiry into the "inner life" of humankind. Kohut: "the idea itself of an inner life ... and thus of the psychology of complex mental states, is unthinkable without our ability to know via vicarious introspection."

Evidence-Based Research

Recent studies provide compelling evidence that psychoanalysis results in long-term, deep, psychological change, symptom reduction, and lasting improvements in relationships, work, and overall well-being.

Psychoanalytic treatments have been regularly compared to other treatment methods in recent decades, such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy [CBT] and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, [DBT].

Psychoanalytic treatments do at least as well as and often better than other modalities in achieving and maintaining treatment gains. People who have undergone psychoanalysis continue to make gains long after treatment has ended. (See “The Scientific Standing of Psychoanalysis” by Professor Mark Solms, Department of Neuropsychology, University of Cape Town.)

Psychoanalysis – Frequency and Length of Treatment

A traditional psychoanalysis involves scheduling regular 45- or 50- minute sessions three to five times a week for a number of years, the length and frequency depending on the analyst, treatment requirements, and what the patient can afford. The commitment to analysis is a serious one on the part of both patient and analyst.

Any analyst member of the International Psychoanalytical Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association will have gone through her or his own four-year "training analysis" in the form of a traditional psychoanalysis where the analyst is a "training and supervising analyst" or senior analyst.

Dr. Anders is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association, and a training and supervising analyst at his training institute, The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles.

The training analysis helps the candidate analyst develop a deeper understanding of his or her own unconscious internal world in addition to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of psychoanalytic treatment.

Any well-trained analyst will be able to use these deeper understandings to accompany their analysands in their mutual exploration of their analysands' unconscious internal worlds. The well-trained analyst actually learns how to use their own unconscious internal worlds in their role as analyst. This is an important function of the analyst's training analysis.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy generally involves fewer sessions per week. Some patients start with one session a week and later move to more frequent sessions or a full psychoanalysis.