My own experience, in my private psychoanalytic practice, in working with people from every walk of life, is that real healing and recovery from lifelong issues of depression, anxiety, inhibition, and repetitive negative patterns in relationships, requires sufficient time and hard work for real change to take root. We all have complex internal worlds, and many of the internal conflicts, fears and hopes, needs and wants, that run our lives, do so without our full awareness or cooperation.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a means toward a fuller awareness of one's own internal world.
This awareness is what makes the difference between a life where one is trapped, or a life where one is free. Psychoanalysis today is no longer bound by some of the rigid conventions that are so often stereotyped in jokes and cartoons. Interpersonal, relational, object relations,humanistic, existential and self psychological schools of psychotherapy have emphasized empathy, openness and warmth, in the therapeutic relationship. Psychoanalysts, out of all mental health professionals, are the only therapists required to undergo their own personal psychotherapy, in addition to rigorous requirements in academic and clinical work. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is the treatment of choice for people who feel trapped, unable or afraid to realize their dreams, caught in repetitive patterns, missing the love and fulfillment in life and work that are human birthrights.