Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Research by John Bowlby shows that we are programmed to crave human contact from the earliest moment of our lives. Therapy makes available ongoing interpersonal contact, fulfilling both what we naturally desire and also allowing for growth and understanding through our therapeutic relationship.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy holds the following theoretical principals to be fundamental for growth and change:  

• We learn about ourselves through our relationships, including ours.

• Our past affects our present. Psychotherapy examines the here-and-now, but also takes prior experiences into account.

• What is consciously known is only the beginning. The process of therapy allows for material outside our awareness to become conscious. 

• We are often in a state of conflict/ambivalence. Therapy aims to help understand and then untangle these moments of feeling stuck.

People enter therapy for many different reasons. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can alleviate initial symptoms, and then provide a deeper exploration into what may be at the root of the issue.