Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

A form of in-depth talk therapy, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy works to bring forth the unconscious content of a patient’s psyche in order to alleviate psychic tension. In bringing buried thoughts or feelings to light, the patient can then work through previously repressed experiences or emotions (often from childhood) in a safe environment. In practice, this involves spontaneous word association (the therapist says a word and the patient says whatever comes to mind), dream analysis, and transference analysis (transferring feelings towards one individual, like parents, onto another, such as a spouse).