What is a psychoanalyst and what does it do

Psychoanalysis is often identified with its founder's work, Sigmund Freud. Actually, since its birth, more than a century ago, there has been a deep evolution of both theoretical and practical applications.

So, ¿What is a psychoanalyst and what does it do? In this Psychology-online article we will try to deepen this area to answer the questions about what a psychoanalyst studies and what his work consists of, in addition to explaining what guidelines the patient who undergoes a therapy has to follow psychoanalytic.

1. What is a psychoanalyst
2. What is a psychoanalyst
3. What does a psychoanalyst

What is a psychoanalyst

The psychoanalyst is a psychotherapist that works through precise and therapeutic and cognitive adjustment options. Specifically, it is a professional Inspired by psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud and his successors.

What is psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is Theory of the Human Psyche unconscious on which psychotherapeutic practice is based that began with Sigmund Freud's work. On the one hand, psychoanalytic theory investigates unconscious psychic phenomena.

On the other hand, as a result of psychoanalysis a discipline known as psychodynamic psychotherapy that treats psychopathological phenomena such as psychosis and neurosis is born, in addition to other types of psychopathologies.

How to be a psychoanalyst

He Training To become a psychoanalyst is very long, selective and complex. In addition, in parallel to the process to exercise as a psychotherapist, it is necessary to follow selection procedures and training guidelines rigorously established by the different national and international psychoanalytic societies.

Within this selection process to be a psychoanalyst, it is expected that The candidate performs a personal and didactic analysis For several years, in addition to clinical supervision, practices, courses and theoretical-clinical seminars.

Generally, the psychoanalyst practices his own analyst profession in his own private study and the patient is asked to respect some precise standards (Settings) without which a psychoanalytic work could not be initiated. We see them below:

• High availability for weekly sessions (from two to four) and its duration (45-50 minutes).
• Cradle use, either Chaise-Longue, in which the patient sleeps while the analyst sits behind him.
• Payment modalities They are some functional criteria through which the relational framework in which the analyst-patient relationship will be developed.

What is a psychoanalyst

The studies of a psychoanalyst are focused on psychoanalysis, which has set the objective of Theorize the normal development of the individual. Thus the name of metapsychology is born, whose formulations aspire to describe the psychic apparatus from three points of view:

1. Topic: as a spatial entity where to place psychic phenomena.
2. Dynamic: in which the forces that oppose or not to the passage from one system to another are "described".
3. Economic: where is the amount of energy used in psychic processes considered.

With the advancement of knowledge in the field and in the bordering fields, such as psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, Infant Research, the attachment theory or the Social cognition, The classical theory of psychoanalysis has evolved and changed.

These changes They have given life to new schools of thought that date back to the psychoanalytic thread. Among them are the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung and the individual psychology of Alfred Adler, both eminent students of Freud.

What does a psychoanalyst

If you wonder what to talk to the psychoanalyst or what you do, you should know that their main mission is cure certain mental disorders, investigating the unconscious dynamics of the individual. Until the end of the 19th century, these disorders were treated by psychiatrists and neurologists through hospitalizations for reeducational purposes or with the use of hypnotherapy.

The Viennese doctor Sigmund Freud, neurologist and also user of hypnosis, suggested that there was a Conflict between opposite psychic demands. In the course of his successive theoretical formulations, Freud formulated three hypotheses, one after another, about the possible genesis of the conflict:

1. The conflict between the pleasure principle and the principle of reality, that is, between the need to satisfy internal pleasure and what is necessary with the real world.
2. The conflict between sexual impulse and self -preservation.
3. The conflict between the desire for life and the desire for death.

As therapeutic practice, psychoanalysis puts among the main objectives the resolution of this conflict through patient unconscious research. The main methods used by a psychoanalyst to deal with this research are:

• Free association analysis.
• Analysis of failed acts.
• Dream analysis

Thanks to these processes, psychoanalysis allows access the "contents extracted from consciousness" that generate the conflict. Other key, fundamental concepts for an adequate psychoanalytic therapeutic process are transfer, countertransference, resistance (and in general defense mechanism).

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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