What is psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalytic therapy prioritizes the unique speech of each individual patient, highlighting what goes unnoticed in conventional conversations. Patients are invited to say everything that comes to mind, with as little censorship as possible, and with as much freedom as is tolerable. In psychoanalysis, this is classically referred to as “free association.”

The therapist in a psychoanalytic therapy is not an authority who knows the true meaning of the patient’s speech. Rather, they are a careful listener whose responses punctuate where something unknown can be heard.

From the therapist’s responses to the unknown in the patient’s speech, the patient has an opportunity to make new interpretations of their own thoughts, enlarging the space available for the unknown parts of their-selves. By this method, psychoanalysis maintains a radical respect for the autonomy and irreducible singularity of how each subject expresses the conditions of their being.