Why do people go into analysis?
People decide to go into an analysis for lots of reasons. It may be that they’re having difficulties with work, study or family life or are having problems around love, sex, & relationships. It may be that they’re struggling with choices in life or are worried about their identity. They may simply have a sense that there are repeating patterns in their lives that they suffer from but can’t seem to change.
How was psychoanalysis created?
In 1882, an Austrian woman called Bertha Pappenheim – later a well-known social worker, feminist and writer – made a treatment suggestion to her doctor, Josef Breuer. Calling it the ‘talking cure’, she asked him if he would agree to simply listen to her while she spoke to him at length about her life and the problems that she was experiencing. Breuer accepted her request and later discussed this method of treatment with a close colleague of his, the neurologist and psychopathologist Dr. Sigmund Freud. Freud adopted and greatly developed this technique in his own work and all of what later became the talking treatments found their beginning here. Freud gave the rest of his life to developing the practice and theory of psychoanalysis. Forced to flee the Nazi persecution of the Jews, he left Vienna in 1938 to live in London and worked there until his death in 1939. Freud’s creation, psychoanalysis, has always held that human suffering finds a unique expression, treatment and transformation through the work of speech in the analytic setting.
Do people really lie on a couch when they talk?
Each treatment is built around the individual. Some people may work better lying on a couch where others will be better off in some kind of a face-to-face setting. All analyses start with a series of sessions which are called ‘preliminary discussions’ and these may go on for some time.
How many sessions are there in a week?
Once a week seems to be the minimum if a treatment is to gain and keep a working momentum and it can often be helpful to speak more than once a week – but there’s no ‘norm’ for this. The conditions of the work are discussed in the first sessions but these can be revisited at any time. Sessions can be spread across the week or can happen on the same day.
How long will the treatment go on?
It’s entirely up to the person concerned – the ‘analysand’ – to decide this for themselves: one session may be enough or a treatment may continue for months or indeed years.
How much does it cost? Is there a fee for the first meeting?
In the same way that there’s no standard treatment in psychoanalysis, since there aren’t any ‘standard people’ seeking treatment, there’s no standard fee either. It’s important that fees are appropriate, affordable and sustainable for each person and so fees – including those for the initial session – are agreed only after a discussion of individual circumstances.