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What Is Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a method used by trained psychotherapists or psychologists to help them identify the root cause of a person's present actions or behavior. To do this, they conduct a number of sessions in which the patient recollects some of his most life-changing events. This process is more commonly referred to as free association. Psychoanalysts use the information that they gather from these sessions together with their other observations to develop treatment for a particular psychological illness or other self-limiting inhibitions or illogical fears.

Sometimes a patient is able to recollect a tragic experience and relates it to his present situation.

In this case, he might be able to treat himself over time. For instance, if he has a severe hydrophobia and he could recall a particular experience of being almost drowned as a child, this might help him to put his current situation in perspective. Being able to address a suppressed thought successfully might help in ending the conflict between the body and the mind.

Many contemporary psychotherapists accept a psychoanalysis model established on the idea of conflict.

We all have moral principles which help determine whether a particular act is right or wrong. In the same way, our physical bodies have their own particular needs which our rational thought cannot easily control.  For instance, a married man may come across a gorgeous young lady at work. While he fully knows that having an illicit affair is morally wrong, he cannot deny the attraction that he feels towards her. Even if he moves away from her and didn't have any physical encounter with her, he will still experience a conflict between his mind and body. In the long run, the mind can be overpowered by all these conflicts, making it necessary to find a way for those repressed feelings and fantasies to be safely expressed. This is where psychoanalysis comes in. It offers a guided form of expressing one's self which should eventually lower the level of conflict between reality and fantasy.