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Psychoanalysts try to identify the conflict that is precipitating the symptoms. The conflict can be the result of conscious or unconscious forces. This therapy, more than any other individual psychological therapy, emphasizes the role of the unconscious in mental disorders. The unconscious can be accessed during therapy sessions through free association, a technique used by the therapist in which the client is asked to say whatever comes to his/her mind. The role of the therapist is to observe constantly and connect the comments made by the client with events and emotions in his/her earlier life and with other comments he/she made in the past. The psychoanalyst then interprets these comments in terms of their meaning for the events and conflicts the person is experiencing. In this way, the therapy sessions shed new light on the problems and the unconscious thoughts, thereby explaining the symptoms and eliminating them. A central tool of the psychoanalyst is transference. Transference is the process by which the client "acts out" with the clinician relationships he/she has in her life, either past or present. What the person is doing, unconsciously, is re-living traumatic relationships in order to resolve them. Analyzing and resolving transference results in termination of treatment, since transference usually begins when the client is starting to resolve conflicts and bring about a final resolution. From the above, it is clear that this treatment is not advisable for all mental health disorders. Even Freud argued that psychoanalysis should not be used with people with schizophrenia, for example, and only in certain cases with other psychoses. In fact, because psychoanalysis is a long-term , expensive treatment, it is recommended only for serious problems. Corsini and Wedding2 identify the following disorders as amenable to psychoanalytic treatment: phobias, character disorders, sexual disorders, certain types of depression, neuroses, drug addiction, borderline personality disorders, etc. Click here to go to the web site of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Last updated 12/19/03 |
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