What problems can psychoanalytic psychotherapy help with?
Many problems or difficulties bring people into therapy. The most common difficulties are:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Relationship problems
- Bereavement and other losses
- Traumatic experiences
- Childhood sexual abuse
- Other difficult early life experiences
- Struggles with life transitions
- Feelings of emptiness and hopelessness
- Struggles at work
- Suicidal feelings
- Sense of loneliness or alienation
Sometimes people seek out therapy because life has lost its meaning, or a person feels stuck in relation to their adult development and relationships.
Is Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy always Long-term?
Occasionally it is possible to work in a short-term contract in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, usually 16 weeks or 6 months. This is helpful when there is a focused problem that can be explored in relation to an underlying difficulty. For example someone may experience a bereavement that is proving hard to process, and this may connect with earlier struggles in that person’s life.
Some people come into therapy as part of a training experience as personal therapy is central to the training of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapists.