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What is psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis is a
therapeutic method with the power and effectiveness to eradicate psychic
suffering.
Conceived and created by Sigmund Freud more than 100 years ago, and
reoriented later on by Jacques Lacan, it continues being my first
therapeutic choice, as it acts on the patient’s unconscious contents which
influence the symptom.
Patients suffer the pain of their symptoms which always, at different
levels, invalidate them. Psychoanalysts invite that patient who is
suffering and asks for help, to see the objective from a different
perspective, to the inside, as well as to revise and rewrite their own
history…to listen to themselves, to assume the enjoyment of their symptoms
in which they are involved, to get to know and defend their wish and to
enjoy the happiness that implies reaching it.
Psychoanalysis has the particularity of being a different experience from
psychology, psychiatry, and the multiple psychotherapies.
Psychoanalysis is a particular experience being its center and crux the “listening”,
which doesn’t attempt to understand and orient but it allows and promotes
the rise of the unconscious, by avoiding framing the listening with
meaning. When the unconscious emerges, the patient can meet their own wish.
Patients come with their symptoms and suffering. Somebody who coexists
with a symptom may get used to it and assume that living with it is
normal. But sometimes the symptom can start to be disturbing and the
person interrogates themselves: why?, why to me?, why now?, why does it
repeat itself?. This is how the patient often elaborates a theory about
what is happening to them, and explains themselves why. When that
explanation is not enough, is when the patient assumes somebody else can
help. somebody who knows and can give them an explanation…somebody who can
cure them.
From the medical clinic perspective, this demand is many times easily
“solved” by giving a medication to suppress the symptom. The problem comes
when behind the symptom, lies something else. When what provokes the
symptom is not simply a virus or any other external pathogen agent, but
something coming from the inside which either generates the symptom itself
or sets the stage for, for example, an infection or a re-infection.
Something which has been possibly going on for a long time and which
remained hidden or unknown to the patient.
The patient’s request, instead of being expressed in words, appears, many
times, written in the body as a symptom. It can’t be put into words,
either because it is very painful, or unknown.
When the patient talks, unveils in front of who is listening and to
themselves, the sense of that symptom. Their mistakes, expressions, lapses,
silences…will show what the symptom means to them.
Freud says: “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself
that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with
his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. And thus the
task of making conscious the most hidden recesses of the mind is one which
it is quite possible to accomplish” (S. Freud, 1905).
If the doctor who listens to the symptom, responds with an “absolute” and
unquestionable knowledge, and says for example: “nothing is wrong with you”…”they
are silly things”…or “you are stressed”, it is possible that this position,
far from improving the patient’s condition, fixes the symptom and makes
the patient insist on it.
Fortunately, the position of the homeopathic doctors is usually more
careful, they don’t interpret the symptom…or talk about it…but they listen
to what the patient thinks and says about what is happening. The
homeopathic doctor will medicate the person in a holistic and integral way,
as homeopathic medicine influences not only the physic but also the
emotional aspects playing a role. Also, the symptom is not expected to
disappear or be suppressed at first; instead, a subjective improvement
which could lead to a reestablishment of the lost equilibrium will be
expected. When that equilibrium is achieved the symptomatology disappears
and the patient is healed.
But many other times, after the homeopathic treatment, the symptom appears
to be better delimitated to be listened to and to incentive the patient to
question themselves about it, specially when the patient gets better and
the symptom, or the illness which frequently occurs are repeated. This is
when the psychoanalytic listening suggests going deeper into the unveiling
work of the patient.
Bibliography
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Ferrer, N. “Dudas y rituales. Teoría y clínica
psioanalítica de la neurosis obsesiva”. Ed. Síntesis. Barcelona.
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Ulnik, J. “Skin in psychoanalysis” Karnac
books. London. 2007.
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Vaccarezza, L. “El trabajo analítico.
Conceptos indispensables”. Ed. Síntesis. Barcelona.
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Freud, S. “The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychoanalytical Works of Sigmund Freud” Fragment of an Analysis of
a Case of Hysteria. SE, 7. The Hogarth Press. London. 1905
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