Why Psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis is for those experiencing symptoms which can range from depression and anxiety to just not feeling comfortable in your own skin. It is a way to wake up and find particular solutions to individual dilemmas. If, as the poet, T.S. Eliot observed, we live in an endless struggle to think well of ourselves, psychoanalysis is a means by which that thinking can be re-thought. It happens by speaking in such a way that reveals what has been hidden or repressed.
While those seeking psychoanalytic treatment often complain of depression, anxiety, trauma, listlessness, a sense of alienation and/or confusion, discontent with relationships or employment, and problems with addiction or mood disorders, psychoanalysis can also be a way of educating ourselves about our actual subjectivity.
This is because psychoanalysis is the source from which all psychotherapies derive, and aims most potently to produce truthful knowledge. Commonly described as the Talking Cure, it does not use medication (though you may be on medication when seeking or experiencing treatment) or outside forms of intervention. This clinic functions within the umbrella of The Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis (ACP), which was established more than 25 years ago. It operates in the clinical and scientific field created by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.
The psychoanalytic theory on which the ACP bases its practice and training has been developed over more than a century. The ACP’s practicing analysts have undergone a rigorous training over many years. It involves detailed study of this theory, clinical experience under supervision with a more experienced analyst and a personal psychoanalysis. It is this personal experience which particularly distinguishes the psychoanalyst. During an analysis practitioners learn in a practical, singular and intimate manner about the working of the unconscious and confront their own desires and limitations. This enables them to meet conflicts and symptoms in analysis without prejudice and with the skill and readiness to analyze and uncover truth together.
By analyzing symptoms and problems the patient and the analyst come to understand the unconscious conflicts which cause and maintain suffering. Working together, they bring to consciousness the unconscious subjective truths which previously produced unhappiness and crippling symptoms. Once these are revealed with the interpretative assistance of the psychoanalyst there is an opportunity for new choices and creative change.
