What is Psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is a way of understanding yourself more deeply by paying attention to what usually stays just out of view: the feelings, patterns, and old ways of protecting ourselves that shape our lives without our quite knowing it. Rather than only trying to reduce symptoms, it asks what they mean and where they come from, so that change can go deeper and last.

What happens in sessions?

You talk as freely as you can, saying what comes to mind, including dreams, stray thoughts, and feelings about our work together. I listen for patterns, including the ones that show up between us. Over time, what has been repeated without being understood can be thought about, felt, and changed.

Psychoanalysis or psychotherapy?

Psychoanalysis usually meets four to five times a week, which allows for the greatest depth and continuity. Psychodynamic psychotherapy draws on the same ideas and meets less often, usually once or twice a week. In our first meetings, we decide together what fits.

Does it work?

Yes. A large body of research shows that psychodynamic therapy is effective, and that its benefits tend to last and often keep growing after treatment ends.

Selected research:

• Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98–109.
• Leichsenring, F., & Rabung, S. (2008). Effectiveness of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. JAMA, 300(13), 1551–1565.
• Fonagy, P., et al. (2015). Pragmatic randomized controlled trial of long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy for treatment-resistant depression: The Tavistock Adult Depression Study. World Psychiatry, 14(3), 312–321.
• For an accessible overview of the science, see Mark Solms, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing (2026).

What it offers

• Greater emotional freedom and self-understanding
• Integration of mind and body, thought and feeling
• The ability to sustain intimacy and creativity
• A more authentic relationship to your own life and desires

For those drawn to it, psychoanalysis becomes not only a treatment but a way of thinking and living: a sustained inquiry into the truth of one's own experience.

Curious to learn more? See Resources for readings.