People come to psychoanalysis from all walks of life, and my practice in Los Angeles is welcoming and diverse. There is a lot of cultural currency at this moment surrounding psychoanalytic therapy, but for those who are interested, it is important to distinguish between therapy and analysis.
As a marriage and family therapist, I am trained in helping individuals make adaptive and proactive adjustments to facilitate better functioning in their life domains. However, the objective of an analyst is not the facilitation of adaptation and adjustment to the social condition of any set culture. The purpose is instead aimed at opening up a space for what has been un-receivable by the culture to be spoken, expressed, and heard.
Unlike an individual or family therapy frame, which might work well at a frequency of once, twice, or even sometimes less than once per week, an analysis generally requires 3-5 sessions per week, consistently over a period of time. This is because the work takes place on a register that is otherwise not readily accessible via speech, and higher frequency sessions establish the working conditions for the treatment to unfold. Lacan is famous for claiming, “the unconscious is structured like a language,” and to be immersed in this language to the point of fluency, one must listen and speak often.
From its earliest conception, psychoanalysis was a subversive practice, rather than an adaptive one. Psychoanalysts in the tradition of Freud and Lacan are still working from the perspective that the psychoanalytic space offers a continuum through which the drives [of Eros and Thanatos] can be exerted, and to some degree mastered, via the ‘talking cure,’ where otherwise, one might only experience them as symptoms and consequences. This treatment addresses the subject of the unconscious through speech, and many people do experience a form of relief from the suffering that initially brought them in, and a renewed feeling of internal clarity, direction, and meaning.
Additional information about my approach in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis can be found by visiting Psychology Today profile, here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/profile/370062
Jack Brennan, LMFT 