Understanding Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is an activity that manages to definitively change discomfort into well-being. It is based on the use of the word and only two people participate: the analyst or person being psychoanalyzed and the analyst or person already analyzed. Psychoanalysis is a modern and current technique, highly effective and fast, and can be performed in person or online.

The psychologist Rafael Cejas Hermoso reminds that psychoanalysis is not a practice consisting of advising or directing the other person, nor is it a therapy, but the analyst does not intend anything other than to help the analyzing person to know what has led him to suffer in life, why this has happened, why it continues and how to remedy it.

The person being analyzed accesses a part of himself, known as the unconscious, although it is called by other names. The knowledge gained, and the modifications made, are lastingly established. If it has been done well, the effects and the improvement are definitive.

How is psychoanalysis practiced?

The patient talks about himself and his suffering. Psychoanalysis should help him to talk about life, about how he sees it. In fact, there is only one rule to follow and that is to talk about everything that comes to his mind, without worrying whether it is correct or not, whether it is well said or not. It doesn’t matter if what is spoken seems to have no relation to what was said before.

The psychoanalyst listens to what the analysand says and intervenes at those moments he thinks appropriate, either by punctuating some statement, or by making a comment or asking a question. The aim is not to correct what the other person has said but to resend his own words, or others, in such a way as to make him think and reevaluate his own sayings. It is not a question, therefore, of giving certainties but, on the contrary, of making doubt arise in those beliefs on which the analysand’s life has been sustained.

It is the subject himself who brings down one after the other those important concepts, signifiers, on which he has built his interpretation of life, the one that makes him suffer. His life is reconstructed in a joyful way. The psychoanalyst’s words produce an effect of interpretation and change that are definitive.

How does current psychoanalysis differ from traditional psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis has long been seen as a long process; it does not have to be so. In fact, it all depends on the resistances that the subject puts up to himself. It may seem an incongruity, but it is so. Let us remember the saying “Better the devil you know than the good you don’t know”. We usually cling to those habits that have marked our lives. We often say: “That’s my character”, “That’s the way I am”, as if this were unchangeable. However, it is not true, one can improve, one can be much happier than one usually is.

Nowadays, the analyst intervenes, of course, without his own discourse being taught in the session as if it were a master class. The analyst has to know how to punctuate, to influence, to comment on the person’s sayings, the effect is quick, sure and lasting. And he knows how to do all this because he has already psychoanalyzed himself and knows his unconscious. It is not a question of the patient’s becoming similar to what the psychoanalyst thinks, but of freeing the person from his or her problems.

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The subject will gradually accept that what needs to be changed is not outside the world and will understand and be able to modify his foundations, whichever he wishes. You are not directed towards a change; only if you see it and accept it, that change will be facilitated.

We cannot change if we do not know what drives us to be the way we are because even if we change superficially or temporarily, our way of being will resurface, that is why people seem to improve after a therapy or some advice but nothing has usually changed, the symptoms and discomfort reappear in the same way or by another way. This is what changes psychoanalysis and forever.

How does psychoanalysis work in the 21st century?

In our 21st century society people need to get to the bottom of their problems more quickly. The method of sitting and just listening is not bad, but it is very slow. However, knowing where and when to intervene, the results are very satisfactory and fast.

During the analysis it often happens that the analysand makes demands to the psychoanalyst, either for certain words, or for certain positions and support. The psychoanalyst will not fall into this demand, he/she cannot become a kind of psychological father or mother of the analysand, he/she must maintain his/her independence. It will not be easy for the analyst.

For a person to improve his or her discomfort means breaking schemes on which he or she has based his or her life. Which is usually based on complaint, obsession, guilt, dissatisfaction, fulfillment of duty, sex, hatred, lack of love, and so on.

What new developments have occurred in this field in recent years?

In very few sessions you will know the origin of your problems and you will begin to understand that practically everything that affects you in life is related to the cause of your problems.

First step: the person knows what is the cause, the etiology of his or her problems in life. We only need a few sessions.

Second step: the subject of the analysis understands and reasons about what he has discovered about himself. They usually nod when you talk about it. They understand and quickly ask how to change.

Third step: the change does not consist only in understanding what is happening to him but in bringing out his true desire, not the one inherited from childhood, that is what has made him suffer. Once everything is understood, the desire to reject what has been detrimental in your life must arise. From then on, a more authentic and happier person with his or her own SELF is built.