Why psychoanalysis? Because we are not always who we think we are, nor do we necessarily want what we believe we want. We repeat what hurts us, resist what might help us, and find ourselves caught in familiar ways of loving, suffering, and living that even our best efforts seem unable to change. Much of what moves us remains unknown to us. Freud called this the unconscious.
Psychoanalysis begins with the understanding that our symptoms, relationships, desires, dreams, and even our most troubling experiences have something important to tell us. Through speaking freely, listening closely, and attending to what emerges between patient and analyst, we begin to discover something of the unconscious conflicts and emotional life that shape our experience of ourselves and others.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis share this approach, although they may differ in frequency and intensity. Treatment can involve meeting once or several times a week, depending on the person and the nature of the work.
The aim is not simply to know ourselves better, or even to find relief from suffering, important as both may be. It is to become less captive to the lives we have unconsciously made for ourselves so that more creative ways of being, loving, and living can happen.