Beginning Therapy

There are many different reasons why a person may choose to begin therapy. For some, physical or psychical suffering may have reached a point where it no longer feels tolerable, affecting one’s overall wellbeing and day-to-day life. Others may seek therapy because they are experiencing anxiety, depression, symptoms or illnesses that are causing them psychological distress.

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At times, difficulties may arise within relationships or family dynamics, leading to feelings of emotional distress. For others, therapy offers a space to reflect on questions about oneself, one’s life direction, or recurring patterns of thought and behaviour that may be difficult to understand.

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In some instances, people who have experienced traumatic events decide to begin therapy to speak about their experiences and try to process and overcome the negative effects that remain after these events. Whatever the reason, therapy provides a confidential and supportive setting in which such experiences, feelings, and questions can be explored with care.

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The Psychoanalytic Approach to Therapy

Within my practice, I listen in a particular way to what is being said and the spoken history of one’s life. This mode of listening is distinctive to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic work aims to create a space in which a person may come to articulate through speech something of their own life story. In listening carefully to the unique way each individual speaks about their life and difficulties, the therapeutic process can open the possibility for insight and change.

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Psychotherapy or Psychoanalysis​

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Whether a person begins their therapeutic journey through psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, both approaches are grounded in the same clinical principles of psychoanalytic practice. Each offers a space in which the individual is invited to speak freely and without judgement.  

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For some, psychoanalytic psychotherapy may be the appropriate place to begin. Sessions take place once per week and last approximately 40 minutes. The duration of each session may vary slightly, as the structure of the work is shaped by the material spoken and the natural rhythm of the session itself.

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Psychoanalysis involves a greater frequency of sessions. Sessions take place at least twice per week and are shorter in duration, (approximately 20 minutes), though their length can also vary.

In both forms of practice, the emphasis remains on the individual’s speech and their subjective experience of their life experiences and their world around them.

 

Whether through psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, the aim is not to provide ready-made answers, but to facilitate a process of discovery. This allows the individual to develop a greater understanding of their relationships with others, to ease their suffering, and allow for a movement towards understanding themselves and their desire.

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Freud identified the process of psychoanalysis early on in his work, where he likened the analytic method to that of “excavating a buried city.” (Freud 2012, p. 139).

 

He described this new procedure as “one of clearing away the pathogenic psychical material layer by layer,” emphasising the gradual and meticulous nature of psychoanalytic work — a process through which unconscious material is brought to light and made available to thought and speech.