The psychotherapy process resembles a tug-of-war; the conflict between the part of us that desires change and the part of us that refuses to abandon the familiar; no matter how painful and compelling this “familiar” could be…
According to the assumptions that psychoanalysis accepts, all our feelings, thoughts, behavior, fears and anxieties are directly but mostly unconsciously related to our past experiences.
This is where the phrase 'we need to go back to your childhood' actually comes from. Therefore, the way we perceive and interpret all our relationships; the way we experience all events of our lives is related to the 'connections' that formed between our past and the moment of actual experience.
For this reason, psychoanalysis refuses the possibility of 'random' or 'accidental' mental processes. It accepts that all our emotions, thoughts, behavior, as well as our dreams, slips of the tongue and made mistakes emerge through these systematic but highly complex mental connections.
However, contrary to popular belief, the aim of psychoanalysis is not to identify and bring to light the traumas experienced in the past that have been unconsciously repressed.
The main purpose of psychoanalysis is to identify these mental connections and to loosen their ties; thus, to make the 'new' way of existence for the patient possible.
To be released from these connections means to be capable consciously and in different way experience life in all its areas; to rewrite the biography of patient in the light of newly invented awareness.
Dynamic psychotherapy uses all techniques, theories and concepts of psychoanalysis and regulates the frequency of interpretations, intensity of provided support and involvement in to the process in line with the client's needs.
Dynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have some methodological but not theoretical or conceptual differences. Among these methodological differences are: the frequency of sessions, the duration of sessions, the intensity of the therapeutic involvement into the process, and so on...
In other words, dynamic psychotherapy has the less rigid framework of the treatment process that makes it more convenient for the treatment of many kinds of psychological difficulties than the psychoanalysis does.
