About Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis: A Guide from the North Carolina Psychoanalytic Society

"Let us not always seek a sedative for what ails us, but let us seek a cure." (A. Bartlett Giamatti)

Psychoanalysis Today
Psychoanalysis is the most comprehensive treatment available today for healing mental distress and promoting personal growth and development.

Psychoanalysis may be the treatment of choice for people who suffer emotional pain, including those who feel weakened or derailed in their personal development, hurt or disappointed in their intimate relationships, or held back in their pursuit of creative and successful work.

Psychoanalysis is often helpful when briefer, less intensive treatments have not been adequate. The sustained and personal collaboration with an analyst can lead to greater fulfillment in love, work and play.

In a tradition arising out of Sigmund Freud's revolutionary discoveries about the human mind a century ago and encompassing important new advances in understanding and technique, psychoanalysis is the definitive treatment for the emotional conflicts of contemporary life.

Psychoanalytic Treatment
Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are intensive therapeutic relationships that provide a unique opportunity to explore and understand one's emotional life in depth.

In psychoanalysis, the patient meets with an analyst four or five times each week, and speaks as freely as possible about whatever enters his or her mind. The analyst tries to understand the patient's experience as fully as possible and share this understanding in a helpful way. To encourage free self-expression, the patient may lie on a couch, looking away from the analyst,

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a similar but less intensive treatment in which the patient and therapist meet from one to three times a week and usually sit face-to-face.

When necessary, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy may be combined with modern psychiatric medications. These drugs can relieve debilitating physical symptoms of depression and anxiety, while the patient and analyst work together to achieve deep and lasting healing.

Who is a Psychoanalyst?
A psychoanalyst is an experienced mental health clinician, usually a psychiatrist (MD), psychologist (PhD), or social worker (CCSW), who has undergone the most advanced and rigorous training in the field of psychotherapy.

In addition to his or her professional degree and clinical training, the analyst has pursued a five- to ten-year program of intensive psychoanalytic education, including a personal analysis, closely supervised clinical work and four years of formal seminars.