I stumbled upon it by chance. I don’t know of a great patient introduction, but I linked some explainers on the ideas below.
Psychoanalysis as I understand it is about understanding your relationship patterns and changing them. The analysis I’m in works through free association, I speak what’s on my mind (including my most disgusting or hateful thoughts, criticisms of my therapist, doubts…) and my analyst mostly just listens, but occasionally pokes and prods, and sometimes opines. His role is partly to be a canvas against which my relationship patterns can present and partly to be an investigator trying to notice and observe behaviors of mine I might not be totally aware of.
It’s not just a matter of knowledge. Change in analysis seems to come through a felt experience, through the relationship with the analyst. I find myself talking and talking and one day I say something that I’ve known my whole life and yet never really said, and I start to connect it to all sorts of forgotten feelings, and it becomes a little less weighty, unstuck in time.
Because of my work in analysis I have developed a now 4 year long romantic relationship, several close friends, and become happier at work. But I still have lots of dissatisfaction and lack of meaning (in those same relationships and work) and that is what I spend most of my time talking about currently.
I’ve heard someone say psychoanalysis is about making you more free. Not in the civil liberties sense, but in a way that is almost a bit painful, as you will have more responsibility.
Personally I also have found the theory behind it rich and deeply insightful. Reading some of Freud (and others, like winnicott) has felt like something clicking in my head about people that I’ve wanted to understand for a long time.
If you like twitter you could try @jonathanshedler (he has a book too[1]) or @nyctherapist. Nancy McWilliams (Psychoanalytic Diagnosis) is supposed to be good if you want to understand the theory. I’ve actually really liked reading the original Freud. I also hear good things about Mitchell’s Freud and Beyond.
Less clinically oriented (and more lacanian) I also like the Why Theory? Podcast. But it really is less focused on psychological insight.
[1] https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20(2006)%20That%20w...
Mine was through referral of a friend. Dumb luck. I’ve heard you can also find them by contacting a local psychoanalytic institute. Seems like the American psychoanalytic institute has a website for finding them as well. [1] On twitter,Jonathan Shedler is in the Bay Area and obviously nyctherapist is in nyc, they are both analysts, it’s possible they could refer as well (no clue). If you’re in NYC you’re in luck because analysts (at least used to) occupy many of the offices near Central Park. I used to find therapists through psychology today, but I think analysts are harder to find there. Asking for a referral from someone you find there might be good too.
In my opinion credentials (MD, PsyD, PhD) and age (within reason) seem like good signs. Proxies for experience.
Oh also, it could be worth explicitly asking the person if they are practicing psychoanalysis specifically. There are a lot of varieties of therapy. Sometimes therapists seem to list themselves as psychoanalytic (or psychodynamic) when they aren’t analysts.
>How long did take you before you felt you were making some progress.
Hm. It’s a little tricky to tease apart. When I started I was so desperate to get better that I would think anything was progress. Which is to say I felt like things were improving immediately, but I think the deeper kinds of progress actually came later. Psychoanalysis is after real psychological change. I think the changes I have experienced have come from slowly but deliberately picking apart these masses of feeling inside me, and have come over the course of months and years rather than days and weeks. I got into a (different) relationship after perhaps 5ish months. Getting into a relationship was not an explicit goal to me when I started, but I was so isolating that I think that’s indication of some genuine change. I know that by now I have changed quite a lot. It’s been about 5 years.
In any case, if you do pursue it, good luck! I’ve found it deeply enriching. It’s great for my curiosity, and I think there’s even a sense of adventure to it (going to depths of the mind that are no where else allowed)
