About psychoanalytic psychotherapy
I’ve constructed this text because of the most common sorts of questions I get. I hope that you find something informative and useful as you read it.
I provide “slow” therapy,” not “fast therapy.”
The way I explain this is to compare therapy to food. There is “fast food” that is available in many places, and it does not cost very much, and you don’t need to wait long for it. Fast food tastes great and makes people feel a sort of satisfaction, but that satisfaction is very short-lived. Even though fast food can create short-term enjoyment, it does not offer much nourishment.
There are lots of “fast therapies” that are like this sort of “fast food.” These therapies are:
- Short term in duration
- Cheap (in that they don’t require a long-term time or financial commitment by the patient, and they don’t pay the therapist very much either.)
- Invested in “making people feel better” instead of doing the more difficult (but also more transformative) work that does not make people feel good at the end of their session.
The therapy that I practice is “slow therapy,” which I compare to a big Thanksgiving meal that takes a long time to prepare but is also (I hope!) far more enjoyable and nourishing than fast food that people pick up via a drive-through.
Another comparison I can make is to fashion. There is “fast fashion,” which is used to describe mass-produced clothing and sold for little money in big box stores. This type of clothing is designed to be appealing to the largest number of people, and it is neither tailored nor unique.
“Slow fashion” is clothing produced in small batches. The material and the labor that makes the clothing is high quality. An example of “slow fashion” would be buying a suit tailor-made just for you. The result “slow fashion” is low supply but high quality.
The type of psychoanalytic therapy I provide is more similar to slow food and slow fashion than fast food and fast fashion.
My practice aims to make high-quality, depth-oriented psychoanalytic therapy accessible to individuals who will do the work of coming to know and understand what is happening in their unconscious.
Please make no mistake, digging into one’s unconscious is not a straightforward process! It’s a long-term process that requires a high level of commitment and perseverance. However, those who undertake the rigorous project of gaining self-knowledge are rewarded with the increased freedom that comes from achieving insight.
It’s important to state that psychoanalytic therapy works very well for individuals who are motivated to invest time and energy into coming to know and understand their unconscious. This is a long-term project as opposed to a fix, cure, and/or a different way of behaving that one arrives at quickly.
While individuals who engage in psychoanalytic therapy usually feel better and behave in ways that foster more personal freedom with less anxiety, those feelings and behaviors are the byproducts of the long-term project of gradually increasing one’s understanding of their unconscious.
In other words: Psychoanalytic therapy focuses on generating insight. I do this because real meaningful change grows out of insight. While other therapies will try to take “short cuts” by skipping the slow process of generating insight and going directly to behavioral changes, psychoanalytic therapy prefers the “long way” of generating better ways of living.
One way to think of the benefits this “long way” offers would be to say that therapy is like many other things in life.
If you only put in a little time working out or eating well, what sort of results do you get? Not very good ones. If you work out and eating well for a long time, what sort of results do you get? Better longer-lasting results!
Another way to describe the benefits of long-term work comes from something I heard at a conference. A psychoanalyst said, “Sometimes you can’t microwave change.” To me, this statement shows how long-term psychoanalytic therapy is more like a meal that a person spends a long time preparing and less like a microwave dinner. The well-prepared meal takes longer, and it costs more, but it offers a satisfaction that the microwave meal won’t provide.
I believe that for therapy to be in any way effective, it has to be something that a patient enters willingly and free of coercion.
I also believe that the patient has to experience the process of therapy as something meaningful and valuable to them.
This means I work only with patients who want to receive the therapy I provide. Being committed to working only with patients who want to be in therapy has not always been easy, and truth be told, it has meant that I work with far fewer individuals than other providers.
Because the patient I’m working with are intrinsically motivated, the work we do together is extremely generative for both me (as a provider) and them (as a patient).
Something that has happened to me a lot is that parents believe their child will benefit from going to therapy, and they bring their son or daughter to my office.
During the intake session, if it is clear the child does not want therapy and is only in the room because their parent is “making” them be there. When this happens, I ask the child for five sessions (the intake session, done with the parent in the room, and then four sessions without the parent). If the child does not want to continue with therapy at the end of those five sessions, I will tell the parent that the therapy (with me) is not an option. I can’t predict how things will be at the end of the five sessions. I’ve had people who were not interested become interested, and I’ve had people who were uninterested remain uninterested.
For me, the bottom line is this: For therapy to work, the person who is receiving the therapy has to want it. If that condition is not met, then the therapy will (I think) be a wasteful use of time and money. I don’t want to waste my time or anyone else time. I also don’t want to make money from people if I can’t provide something of value.