In the late nineteenth century, Freud, the Viennese neurologist made a major discovery in listening to what he trusted his patients. He understood the role of our unconscious and conflicts taking place from our childhood in our future existential, but also in the formation of symptoms of various mental illnesses. This discovery enabled him to develop a method of exploration and especially resolution of these conflicts: the psychoanalytic cure.
This method of solving conflicts and psychological resistance, with an expression totally liberated.
What happens during a psychoanalytic treatment?
The psychoanalytic cure is to put a patient in a relaxation position, lying outside the view of the therapist who stands back so as not to disturb its free expression.
The sessions are repeated regularly, several times a week, 3 or 4 in general … And this frequency is essential.
The patient is speaking, he/she was invited to say whatever comes into his head. But this is not as simple as it seems: the psychological resistance at opposed free flow of his thought by association of ideas.
The method consists in reducing the resistance to arrive at an expression totally liberated. For this, the therapist provides interpretations of what is said, directs the train of thoughts, without ever giving advice or orders from above. It must remain neutral but benevolent.
The therapist uses the relationship between him and the patient, which Freud has shown that it always reproduces patterns of relationship that the patient had experienced with his parents in his childhood.
Who can undergo psychoanalysis?
Everybody can not do this type of analysis. It requires certain qualities that the therapist should assess carefully before entering: flexibility of mental functioning, ability to introspection, verbalization of mental contents. Especially, the patient must be convinced that his troubles have their origin in him, not outside.
The analysis may be a simple opportunity to discover, develop personally. Most often, it is indicated in some psychiatric disorders. It is primarily intended for neurotic disorders, such as minor psychiatric disorders found in many people. These anxieties, inhibitions, depressive tendencies, sexual problems, etc..
The psychoanalytic treatment is also useful in more serious problems such as psychotic disorders, which are real mental illnesses. However, psychoanalysis is still experimental in this area.
It can also occur for certain medical conditions in determining psychological (psychosomatic), but it then requires a medical screening.
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Tags: anxiety, depression, mental illness, neurotic disorder, psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, therapist, treatment
