What is Psychoanalytic Therapy?
Psychoanalytic therapy, a type of integrative therapy is a form of deprogramming, a way to unwind from conventional ways of talking, and begin to tune into yourself, often for the very first time. What's great about it is that you have someone who will go along with you on the journey, but with YOU driving, not them. In many therapies, the therapist is there for you either directing and advising, particularly in CBT, or just listening and supporting. But in psychoanalytic therapy, the therapist is noticing your defenses, the ways you protect yourself from being overwhelmed, and finding a way to help you move past those defenses into a richer emotional life. Like everything in life, there are no two analysts who work exactly the same, but if they are a psychoanalyst they have a better idea of how to help you tap into your unconscious and deeper layers of meaning than most therapists.
I love this quote by a man called Harry Guntrip, who had two analyses with two different people. He is answering the question: What is Psychoanalytic Therapy: "It is, as I see it, the provision of a reliable and understanding human relationship of a kind that makes contact with the deeply repressed traumatized child in a way that enables one to become steadily more able to live, in the security of a new real relationship, with the traumatic legacy of the earliest formative years, as it seeps through and erupts into consciousness. Psychoanalytic therapy is not like a 'technique' of the experimental sciences, an objective 'thing-in-itself' working automatically. It is a process of interaction, a function of two variables, the personalities of two people working together towards free spontaneous growth. " I believe this quotation captures Guntrip's appreciation for the chance to connect with parts of himself that were buried until he had a safe place to let them emerge and communicate with another person, and more importantly, with himself.
Another quote I love is this.
"To find a good parent at the start is the basis of psychic health. In it's lack, to find a genuine 'good object' in one's analyst is both a transference experience and a real life experience." Winnicott
What is being said here? Well, Winnicott, it's author, was a psychoanalyst and a pediatrician, and during his lifetime he wrote poetically about how he thought human beings and their personalities developed. He had great respect for how difficult parenting was, and he even had a weekly radio show in England (he was British) for parents, where he would talk about one important psychological issue each week, because he wanted parents to understand and nurture their children in intelligent and sensitive ways. In his writings, he described the critical role a parent plays in helping a child develop psychological resilience, self -hood, a strong and flexible ego, and a way to live in the world that is playful, creative, and spontaneous. He was a great believer in the idea that psychoanalytic therapy can help a person who lacked good enough parenting when they were first growing up, to catch up later, with the help of a genuinely good analyst, or 'good object' as he discusses in the quote above.
i like to think of integrative therapy that way, as a way to learn to deal with anxiety, a way to undo intolerable trauma, sometimes with EMDR, but most importantly, to feel like you have an ally on your side, as you discover new parts of yourself during the therapy process.
