Psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy has similar objectives to those of psychoanalysis and stems from the same theoretical background (please see the Psychoanalysis link). Both share the common goal of helping the patient to resolve his or her emotional difficulties through the acquisition of deep knowledge of herself or himself.

Strictly speaking, what differentiates psychoanalysis from psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy are the parameters of the setting, the framework within which the treatment takes place, and the kind of psychological work that these different settings promote.

A typical psychoanalysis of an adult takes place three, four or five times a week during years; the patient lies on the couch, the psychoanalyst sits behind the patient, out of sight. This highly specialized framework ––lying down, not seeing the analyst, the high frequency of sessions–– provides the best conditions for the patient to enter into intense and nuanced contact with her or his inner world. The goal is for the therapeutic work to be as deep as possible, and for it to reach the least know stratums of the unconscious.

Psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy usually takes place once or twice a week during years; the patient is sitting and can see the psychoanalyst. This setting usually provides the patient with a greater sense of immediate emotional accompaniment because the therapeutic relationship is similar to the relating frameworks that the patient already knows. The fundamental goal of the work is still to know what unconscious aspects of the patient’s mental life are disturbing his or her wellbeing, but the face to face setting favors a kind of psychological work that is somewhat more directed to the real in the patients life.