What is Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy?
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy focuses on how past experiences influence a person`s present patterns (i.e. thoughts, emotional reactions and behaviors) and relationships. The goals of this kind of therapy are to increase an individual`s self-awareness about these patterns to promote change in the present day. The focus is on exploration of the patient's inner experience, emphasizing this as it occurs in current daily life, as it carries over from significant and influential events and relationships of the past, and as it is manifest in the context of the therapeutic relationship. Symptoms flow from internal conflicts, deficits, dynamics and patterns that create difficulties for our self and block us from creating meaningful life. Of all the modalities, this kind of psychotherapy may last the longest. Sigmund Freud often compared psychoanalysis to an archeological dig. When do you stop digging? Indeed, the deeper you dig, the more you find. It is a therapeutic process and the time it takes depends on the individual circumstances. (فارسی)