Therapy: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a form of talking therapy that is free flowing and encourages you to say and explore whatever is going through your mind.

Psychoanalysis is based on the modern developments of the theories of Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that ‘bad’ thoughts and experiences from childhood are repressed but continue to influence your feelings as an adult.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can help you become aware of hidden meanings or patterns in what you do or say that may cause or contribute to your problems.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can help with a wide range of psychological difficulties, particularly problems that can impact on relationships. Research also shows that for somatic disorders short term psychoanalytic therapy can be more effective than other therapies. Somatic disorders are physical complaints that initially appear to be medical but after investigation cannot be accounted for by a medical cause or diagnosis.

Where CBT is cantered on cognition and behaviours, psychoanalytic therapy would focus more closely on exploring the full range of emotions that you are experiencing. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy seeks to explore why we avoid certain feelings, thoughts, behaviours and situations that we find distressing. It also helps to identify recurring themes that we may not be aware of. Other therapies are more focused on here and now while the psychoanalytic approach helps people explore their pasts and understand how it affects their present psychological difficulties. It can help you to shed the bonds of past experience so that you can live more fully in the present. This approach explores interpersonal relationships and it also emphasis the therapeutic relationship.

Where other therapies are often highly structured and goal-oriented, psychoanalytic therapy allows you to explore your issues more freely.