What is psychoanalysis?
The Toronto Psychoanalytic Society (TPS) has recently published some informative videos on psychoanalysis, who it is most suited for, and what distinguishes it from other kinds of psychotherapy.
In the interview here above, Susan K. Moore, a member of TPS, interviews professor Don Carveth, Training Analyst and ex-Institute Director at TPS, on the subject of what psychoanalysis is.
The conversation touches on what kind of psychotherapy psychoanalysis is, what type of person may seek out treatment, the difference between psychoanalysis and cognitive-behavioral therapy, why the unconscious is important, how dreams are a means to access the unconscious, and the way defenses work, amongst several other topics.
The interview continues on some of the many developments of psychoanalysis since Freud’s death: for instance, how subsequent analysts explored the earliest stages of mental development (Klein and Winnicott); and others discovered, and experimentally studied, the effects of attachment and loss (Bowlby).
Professor Carveth, having been the TPS Institute Director and taught extensively, finishes the interview talking about the importance of teaching and learning about all psychoanalytic perspectives in order to be able to access the widest range of patients’ psychic realities.
This stance is shared by many IPA Institutes and is also the case at the Madrid Psychoanalytical Association, where psychologists and psychiatrists who train there will be exposed to the whole range of theoretical and clinical thought.