I intentionally decided to cover psychoanalysis last because I feel like it's not a modality currently offered by most therapy providers . However, the importance of psychoanalysis in the history of psychotherapy overall is crucial. I couldn't have truly completed an overview of psychotherapy modalities without touching on psychoanalysis and its later derivative, psychodynamic psychotherapy.
When discussing psychoanalysis, one is specifically referring to the body of work and treatment paradigms put forth by Sigmund Freud. While many of his theories and explanations of behavior may read as outdated to modern audiences, what was critical about his work was the concept that people's behaviors are affected by drives and experiences they may not even be aware of. He argued that by bringing unrealized conflicts to awareness, people could ultimately achieve relief from their distress.
Over the course of his career, Freud developed a method of treating patients by allowing them to speak, without censorship, about their thoughts, feelings, and memories. Typically, he met with patients multiple times a week. He used an approach where the patient largely provided the experiential data and contextual information, and he provided concepts or theories that might help them contemplate their experiences in a different light. His work is also the origin of the infamous idea that therapy is provided while lying on a couch. Freud believed that allowing patients to recline on a couch with minimal eye contact was both comfortable enough to allow for them to express themselves freely, but also removed the pressures to adhere to social niceties and traditions.
Both during and after his career, Freud had students and followers who went on to develop a modality called psychodynamic psychotherapy. In total, their approach focused less on innate libido and sexual drive as origins for conflict and behaviors. Instead, they moved towards the idea that childhood experiences, previous relationships, and unresolved conflicts affect a person's current life circumstances and how they approach their life circumstances. Very briefly summarized, they advocated that by helping a person understand how they developed their patterns of behavior, a therapist could help a person towards wanted change. This fundamental approach has contributed to most of the widely used therapy modalities that are practiced today.
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