I will demystify psychoanalytic therapy on this page for you so it's simple and easy to understand. Psychoanalysis is very special to me as it's the first modality I ever used. It also saved my life in helping me get out of bad relationships, interrupt bad life patterns, and understand my childhood, and have an integrated self today.
I always tell people Psychoanalysis is my first home and first wife. I love psychoanalysis so much. I know it's so uncommon to find a young Asian American therapist practicing psychoanalysis nowadays. I believe as an Asian American Therapist that BIPOC clients like you also deserve a rich conscious mind and not just brief behavioral therapy.
It provided such a strong foundation for my approach to healing. You can explore and learn about dreams, and the unconscious and figure out why you keep repeating similar patterns and relationships. The conscious mind is the small tip of the iceberg, and the rest is preconscious and unconscious.
As a contemporary psychotherapist, I practice a psychodynamic approach to therapy, which means you do not lay on the couch but more like a conversational engaging relationship.
Sigmund Freud developed Psychoanalysis. He was the father of talk therapy. Talking cure is a process that through “talking” removes the emotions that were stored in the body and not released. For example, it is like if we are stuffing our emotions into a pillow. I like to take this time to show him some respect, as without him we would not have therapy. He got some things wrong, but he also got a lot of things right including Attachment Theory, Childhood Traumas, and Sex. He was a bold man to talk about sex in Victorian times?!
There are four main parts to Psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy.
Sometimes we will interpret dreams and nightmares in session to get to the unconscious. The insight includes connecting the dots of your childhood past as you unconsciously repeat them in the present. By identifying the patterns and recognizing the repetition, we can free ourselves from a mental prison.
The Id is what drives you to feel pleasure and your desires (video games, shopping, eating, sex, etc.). The ego is the brain, or how you view your world realistically. Superego is the conscience of what is bad or good. Do cats and dogs have a superego? Probably not, but they have Id and Ego as cats and dogs may not feel so bad for peeing on your carpet but are just afraid of punishment. Ego helps you balance between your Id and Superego. However, when you have more conscience or drive to play video games, for example, it causes conflict in your ego. As a psychodynamic therapist, my role is to eradicate the conflicts between your Id, Ego, and Superego so you can free up your mental energy to find love and create passion for work. Isn’t that amazing?
Transference is a fancy term for saying people, objects, and things that remind you of someone or something in the past. For example, if you had a very loving white dog in the past, you may experience positive feelings when you see a white dog walking down the street. This part of therapy helps you get past relationships and childhood wounds because the past stirs up feelings and thoughts in the present. It also helps you see reality of the current relationships as what it is without unconsciously being triggered or brought back to old feelings and connections. You will see the white dog as just a dog without thinking that it can be friendly because of the past experiences with friendly whitei dogs.
My favorite one is displacement. An example of displacement is if a man is bullied by the boss but it is unacceptable to be angry at him, so he comes home and yells at the dog instead. He lets out his anger at his dog instead of his boss.
By addressing this anger in session, you will let this anger out. It interrupts the pattern of displacement and gives you a better way of dealing with conflict and emotions. It will not bleed into your relationships. Yay!
There is probably more to explain because I spent three years training in it, but this is the gist of how I work. I do not want to bore you. I would like to share with you my journey to becoming a psychodynamic therapist instead.
I would say my master's in social work was heavily psychodynamic, we learned defenses and the unconscious. It was all I knew. Then when I graduated, I was still intrigued by it. I wanted to be a competent therapist, so I went back to school and trained at the New York School of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy for three years.
It was intense and felt like a full-time job. I was in analysis, I was in supervision, and had classes every Monday night on the Upper West Side/Upper East Side. I learned so much about the unconscious and the conflicts between the Id and superego, which means conscience sometimes gets in the way of pleasure…
One thing really great about psychoanalysis is that it freed up my conflicts and I had less guilt and less fear holding me back from pursuing my dreams! It also helped with dating, I would not have been in a happy secure relationship if it wasn’t for psychoanalysis.
This approach can be helpful for people struggling with anxiety, depression, childhood trauma, and relationships. It can help a client figure out what they want in life and how to be successful because they will develop a strong sense of self. In other words, it can set you free!
If you want to tap into your rich colorful unconscious mind and find meaning in life, I can offer guidance every step of the way. Contact me to start your journey. Text/call me at 347-631-8350 to set up a free, 15-minute phone consultation.
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