What is Psychoanalysis?

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• What is Psychoanalysis?
• Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
• Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis
• Is Psychoanalysis Only a Therapy?
• The Psychoanalytic Tradition
• Who Can Benefit from Psychoanalysis?
• Who is a Psychoanalyst?
• How to Find a Psychoanalyst

Imagine your mind as a hidden garden, overgrown with tangled vines and shadowed corners. Psychoanalysis is the map and the compass to explore that garden, to uncover the roots of your deepest patterns. It’s not a quick trim; it’s a deep excavation, a journey into the heart of your unconscious.

We often live unaware of the forces that shape our emotions and actions. These hidden currents can manifest as persistent unhappiness, tangled relationships, or a gnawing sense of unease. Friends, self-help books, and willpower alone often can’t reach these depths.

Psychoanalysis is an intimate partnership, a shared exploration. You’ll lie on the couch, speak freely, and we’ll begin to decipher the language of your unconscious. Patterns, silences, and the way you relate to me—all become clues. We’ll trace these patterns to their origins, understanding how they’ve evolved, and how they impact your life today.

It’s a process of re-experiencing, remembering and working through. We’ll wrestle with insights, revisit them, and integrate them; along with making meaning of your problematic behaviors, dreams, and fantasies. Together, we’ll clear the roadblocks to love, work and creativity and cultivate a life of deeper freedom and authenticity. (Back to the top.)

Think of psychodynamic psychotherapy as a focused expedition into that hidden garden. It shares the same map as psychoanalysis, recognizing that many of our struggles stem from unconscious sources. But instead of a full-scale excavation, we’ll focus on key areas, meeting once or twice a week.

Life is busy, and resources are limited. For many, this approach offers a practical path to meaningful change. My approach is pragmatic, grounded in real-world solutions while honoring the complexity of the human experience.
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Children and adolescents have their own unique landscapes to navigate. We adapt the map of psychoanalysis to their world, using play, drawings, and stories to help them express their inner lives.

Parents become partners in this journey, offering valuable insights into their child’s experiences. Together, we’ll work to clear the roadblocks that hinder their development, fostering resilience and growth.
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Although psychoanalysis began as a tool for ameliorating emotional suffering, it is not only a therapy. It is, in addition, a method for learning about the mind, and also a theory, a way of understanding the processes of normal everyday mental functioning and the stages of normal development from infancy to old age. Furthermore, since psychoanalysis seeks to explain how the human mind works, it contributes insight into whatever the human mind produces. In so doing, it has had a profound influence on many aspects of twentieth-century culture.

As a general theory of individual human behavior and experience, psychoanalytic ideas enrich and are enriched by the study of the biological and social sciences, group behavior, history, philosophy, art, and literature. As a developmental theory, psychoanalysis contributes to child psychology, education, law, and family studies. Through its examination of the complex relationship between body and mind, psychoanalysis also furthers our understanding of the role of emotions in health as well as in medical illness.

In addition, psychoanalytic knowledge is the basis of all other dynamic approaches to therapy. Whatever the modifications, the insights of psychoanalysis form the underpinnings of much of the psychotherapy employed in general psychiatric practice, in child psychiatry, and in most other individual, family, and group therapies. (Back to the top.)

Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalyst. Many of his insights into the human mind, which seemed so revolutionary at the turn of the century, are now widely accepted by most schools of psychological thought. Although others before and during his time had begun to recognize the role of unconscious mental activity, Freud was the preeminent pioneer in understanding its importance. Through his extensive work with patients and through his theory building, he showed that factors which influence thought and action exist outside of awareness, that unconscious conflict plays a part in determining both normal and abnormal behavior, and that the past shapes the present. Although his ideas met with antagonism and resistance, Freud believed deeply in the value of his discoveries and rarely simplified or exaggerated them for the sake of popular acceptance. He saw that those who sought to change themselves or others must face realistic difficulties. But he also showed us that, while the dark and blind forces in human nature sometimes seem overwhelming, psychological understanding, by enlarging the realm of reason and responsibility, can make a substantial difference to troubled individuals and even to civilization as a whole.

Building on such ideas and ideals, psychoanalysis has continued to grow and develop as a general theory of human mental functioning, while always maintaining a profound respect for the uniqueness of each individual life. Ferment, change, and new ideas have enriched the field, and psychoanalytic practice has adapted and expanded. But psychoanalysts today still appreciate the persistent power of the irrational in shaping or limiting human lives, and they therefore remain skeptical of the quick cure, the deceptively easy answer, the trendy or sensationalistic. Like Freud, they believe that psychoanalysis is the strongest and most sophisticated tool for obtaining further knowledge of the mind, and that by using this knowledge for greater self-awareness, patients free themselves from incapacitating suffering, and improve and deepen human relationships. (Back to the top.)

Because analysis is a highly individualized treatment, people who wish to know if they would benefit from it should seek consultation with an experienced psychoanalyst. Still, some generalizations can be made. The person best able to undergo psychoanalysis is someone who, no matter how incapacitated at the time, is basically, or potentially, a sturdy individual. This person may have already achieved important satisfactions—with friends, in marriage, in work, or through special interests and hobbies—but is nonetheless significantly impaired by long-standing symptoms: depression or anxiety, sexual incapacities, or physical symptoms without any demonstrable underlying physical cause. One person may be plagued by private rituals or compulsions or repetitive thoughts of which no one else is aware. Another may live a constricted life of isolation and loneliness, incapable of feeling close to anyone. A victim of childhood sexual abuse might suffer from an inability to trust others. Some people come to analysis because of repeated failures in work or in love, brought about not by chance but by self-destructive patterns of behavior. Others need analysis because the way they are – their character – substantially limits their choices and their pleasures. And still others seek analysis definitively to resolve psychological problems that were only temporarily or partially resolved by other approaches.

Whatever the problem—and each is different—that a person brings to the analyst, it can be properly understood only within the context of that person’s strengths and life situation. Hence, the need for a thorough evaluation to determine who will benefit—and who will not—from psychoanalysis. (Back to the top.)

The designation “psychoanalyst” is not protected by federal or state law; anyone, even an untrained person, may use the title. It is therefore important to know the practitioner’s credentials before beginning treatment.

Graduate psychoanalysts trained under the auspices of the American Psychoanalytic Association have had very rigorous and extensive clinical education. Candidates accepted for training at an accredited psychoanalytic institute must meet high ethical, psychological, and professional standards. These candidates are either physicians who have completed a four-year residency program in psychiatry, psychologists or social workers who have completed a doctoral program in their fields or hold a clinical masters degree in a mental health field where such a degree is generally recognized as the highest clinical degree; all must have had extensive clinical experience. Outstandingly qualified scholar-researchers, educators, and selected other professionals may also be approved for psychoanalytic training. All accepted candidates, whatever their background, then begin at least four years of psychoanalytic training.

This training consists of three parts. Candidates attend classes in psychoanalytic theory and technique. They undergo a personal analysis. And they conduct the psychoanalysis of at least three patients under the close and extended supervision of experienced analysts. Candidates who plan to treat children attend further classes and, with supervision, analyze boys and girls ranging in age from toddlers to late adolescents.

Besides conducting psychoanalysis, most graduate analysts also practice intensive and brief psychotherapy, sometimes prescribing medication. Many treat couples, conduct family or group therapy sessions, and work with the aging.

Because psychoanalysts are provided with the most thorough education available in normal and pathological development, their training enhances the quality of all their therapeutic work. It also informs their community activities as teachers, supervisors, consultants, and researchers, in the many different settings – hospitals, medical schools, colleges, day-care centers – where analysts are found. (Back to the top.)

To find a psychoanalyst in the Birmingham area, you can contact Dr. Goldberg, or you may contact the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York City, via its on-line roster. A number of analysts are capable of conducting analysis in languages other than English. For those who cannot afford private fees, often psychoanalysts in training—who are already experienced therapists—will negotiate their fees according to the financial needs of the patient. In addition, many graduate analysts, where indicated in the interests of the analysis, treat patients at reduced rates. (Back to the top.)