Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Everyone experiences difficulties, including problems that we create for ourselves and troubles we have in responding to the opportunities and challenges in life. These may be problems in love or work, symptoms such as phobias, panic attacks, or extreme shyness, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic reactions, concerns about sex or sexual orientation, or impulses to engage in self destructive behavior. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be beneficial in dealing with these issues.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a form of intensive therapy in which the psychotherapist and patient work collaboratively to understand the patient’s conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This process of exploration helps the patient to learn how they became who they are and why they do the things they do. It helps them to recognize and manage their strengths and weaknesses and to achieve a sense of personal acceptance. Such self-understanding leads to the greater emotional freedom necessary to make substantive, lasting changes. The approach is highly individualized and differs from the behavioral approaches in its focus on insight into emotional experience. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy may be used in conjunction with other treatments, such as psychopharmacology.

What to expect:
When a prospective patient contacts me, I usually ask them to come in to discuss their concerns. Typically, we will meet a few times for me to evaluate what type of treatment is the most appropriate. If it is psychoanalytic psychotherapy, treatment consists of meeting one to three times per week for fifty minutes. During the course of therapy, discussion usually covers current problems and relationships, life history and how it relates to these problems, interests and fantasies, dreams, and the therapeutic relationship. I share my understanding of the patient with her or him as we go along. This method of treatment tends to be longer term.