Psychoanalytic psychotherapy offers the patient the possibility of getting to know how his or her mind works, both intrapsychically and interpersonally.
The aspects that are discovered in the therapeutic process allow the person a new knowledge applicable in his daily life, providing feelings that were inhibited, denied, modified or absent.
In order to achieve this, it is very important that the specialist in Psychology has a theoretical frame of reference, rich in resources for understanding and intervention.
Applications of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
At the level of understanding, it is necessary to understand the way in which the patient is ill, to think and interpret how he/she will be cured and, on this basis, to elaborate a tailor-made treatment.
We specialists may or may not share models of understanding and approach, but there are differences in the particular style of each analyst: his motivations, his implicit theories, the hypotheses he shuffles, and how he follows them up in order to corroborate them, or how he faces the ethical challenges posed by clinical practice.
By implicit theories I mean both the theoretical background that supports the professional’s training, as well as his personal and professional training: modes of upbringing with the ideals and beliefs they imply, his idiosyncrasies, his personal analysis, the authors he has read, his clinical supervisions, the culture within which he is immersed, etc. All of this influences the way he works.
And as for the way of putting them into play, I am referring to the style that encompasses the personal characteristics of character, personality, way of speaking, moving, charisma, affective tone, language, humor, expression, etc.
Another important issue that the analyst has to take into account is at what moment of the session or treatment (timing) he/she should make an intervention, how he/she will do it and under what gaze. The latter implies asking oneself which model of understanding and intervention is more convenient to use:
- From a more traditional model? In this case, something repressed is interpreted in order to make it conscious.
- From a more relational point of view?
- Or thinking that there is a deficit in one of the areas that make up their subjective constitution? In this case we must help to construct what does not exist in their psyche, for example: deficiencies at the level of self-esteem, deficit in attachment, impossibility to regulate emotionally, deficit of resources to establish interpersonal relationships, lack of social or work skills.
When I say the How, I am referring to the way of approaching the intervention. If it is by means of words: choose the words with which we are going to enunciate the sentence, the tone of voice appropriate to the moment the patient is living, to the moment of the session or to the stage of the treatment. For example, if it is a devitalized patient who needs vitalization, perhaps the tone of voice and the vitality of the therapist should be more actively enthusiastic. If the patient, on the other hand, is upset, anxious or aggressive, the intervention should be calm, with a soft tone of voice and generating an atmosphere of tranquility and calm. In both examples the intervention will tend to balance the balance.
In the patient’s discourse we have to listen with equal importance to the facts of his story, the order in which they appear, the communicational modality from which the patient connects, the emotional states he experiences during the session and the structural aspects by which the contents are processed.
People tend to seek ideal self states. This state implies a mental representation of the self in relation to an associated affect, where there was an ideal experience of a way of being with another.
It is important to listen and analyze the roles that the patient plays, looking to reproduce these ideal states of the self in order to experience the related affects.
Going through a psychoanalytic therapy is fascinating, and allows to widen the experiential field of the self, thus improving the quality of life.