If you are looking for a therapist for the first time, the variety of talking therapies available today may be confusing. You may find it helpful to read the UKCP's explanation of different modalities. I am trained to work psychoanalytically. If you would like to know what this means, here is an explanation from the UKCP:
Psychotherapists working in psychoanalytic practice work believe that our unconscious and early life experiences affect our development, current experience and relationship with ourselves and others.
In making the unconscious conscious, practitioners believe we will be more informed about ourselves and why we experience things as we do. This gives us the potential to make new choices about how we live, with greater awareness and less distress.
The relationship between you and the therapist is a central part of what Sigmund Freud called ‘the talking cure’. Working with the unconscious in psychoanalytic therapy may involve working with dreams and using free association alongside interpretations of symbolic experiences and material, as well as straightforwardly talking things through.
Classically, psychoanalytic psychotherapists may work with you on an individual basis and you may be offered a couch or a chair in their consulting rooms. They will also offer different models of attendance from once a week to twice or more times each week. Many therapists now also offer sessions online or by phone.
People seek psychoanalytic psychotherapy for help with a wide range of issues including depression and anxiety as well as more complex, deep-seated or historical issues. You may also be offered psychoanalytic therapy as a couple, within a group, or be offered child or family therapy. In addition, many therapists have different approaches to delivering therapy, such as art, drama, music and body therapy, all of which may also be informed by psychoanalytic theory.
Psychoanalytic practice includes Freudian, Jungian analytic, object relations based, psychodynamic, attachment based and relational approaches to working with the psyche.
