What is psychoanalysis?

We’ve all heard of Sigmund Freud, but today I wanted to ask the following question — what is modern-day psychoanalysis? I’ve been doing weekly sessions with Dr Azeen Khan for the past several months, and it’s been a very positive experience. Therefore, I wanted to dig a bit deeper into the rationale for this therapy. From Dr Khan’s website:

Psychoanalysis is an invitation to speak. With time, each person’s speech comes to be organized around what is difficult or impossible to bear and so speak about: one’s symptom.

Her analytic orientation is informed by the work of Sigmund Freud and the teachings of Jacques Lacan, as elaborated by Jacques-Alain Miller and other members of the schools of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP). She is a member of the Lacanian Compass, an associated group of the New Lacanian School (NLS), one of the seven schools comprising the WAP.

A Lacanian psychoanalysis offers each analysand the possibility of inventing a new way of making do with their symptom. Through acts of speech addressed to an analyst, one can begin to find singular and satisfactory solutions to old and repetitive ways of being and responding.

My experience with psychoanalysis has been very positive, and I feel I am gradually changing. The therapist is there to listen, and rarely interrupts. Occasionally we come to what seems like a important point to emphasize.

Being in psychoanalysis has helped me cope with my fears. It has also helped me become a better doctor, I think. Because in the health center, remembering my own psychoanalysis sessions, I am forced to slow down and listen better to my patients.

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