Psychic Truth and Psychoanalysis - Vicki's Clinic

Psychic Truth and Psychoanalysis

One of Freud's great discoveries was to help us realize that we all are living in a movie, with ourselves as a writers, main characters and directors, driven by unconscious forces and the many defences against them. However, like in Woody Allen's movie, The Purple Rose of Cairo, where the character steps out of the screen to try and create a different life, we try to help our patients discover the movie they've been living, the forces that led them there, the dangers they fear in changing, and in this way help them to live the story of their choosing. One of the most important goals of psychoanalysis is to help the patient gain the capacity to momentarily step outside the story and observe it as their story.

The process of initiating this change is part and parcel of creating a psychoanalytic mind, which is unique to psychoanalysis. We try to set in motion a creative process that only the patient can complete and ultimately change the inevitability of actions into the possibility of reflection. From its inception to the present, psychoanalysis has been a transformative journey for patients, helping them rediscover the essence of being alive and human. Psychoanalysts strive to open up previously closed, rigidly defended, or undeveloped spaces in the patient's mind, facilitating the rediscovery of their own mind. This process of self-discovery is a testament to the profound impact of psychoanalysis on the patient's life. Analysis is uncompromising in relation to other therapies because it alone aims at aiding our patients to become, or to become again, the principal agents in their own history and thought; the sole inalienable freedom a human being possesses.

We try to give back to our patients the one indispensable component of being human - their mind - and the freedom and creativity that comes along with it. Psychoanalysts press for the development of a patients’ capacity to know how to know their mind, to know the way they think, as opposed to knowing what is in one’s mind. Through this, one comes to understand how to know. Your psychoanalytic psychotherapist will view, and help you view, the psychic events of your mind as they occur, one after the other, and to be curious about their deeper meanings - the past as present-day forces, that the psychanalyst can help you become aware of, in the moment.  Understanding the past in the present is crucial to enliven a patient's sense of who they were and who they are, to give depth to how the past affects the present, and to differentiate what is there from what used to be. A key component of the curative process in psychoanalysis is the discovery of the multiple psychic truths that have guided the patient’s life, most often outside of their awareness.

We consider that it is the search for psychic truth/s that is the therapeutic factor in psychoanalysis, i.e. the searchfor psychic truth/s, as opposed to the finding of the/a truth. Psychoanalysis can be seen as a way to reach and comprehend the ‘psychic truths’ and the conflicts they create, that guide a patient’s behaviours, and this is the basis of the curative process. Thus, the analyst attempts to create the conditions in which insight is possible, rather than giving insight per se. For example, in any interactions a patient reports on, what matters psychoanalytically is how the patient thought of and experienced the interaction, why they might have experienced it a particular way, and what it means to the patient that they are reporting the interaction to their psychoanalyst The psychanalyst aims to foster the capacity to think freely about whatever comes to mind, observe it, and think creatively with it.

We all have stories that are remembered but were somehow interrupted, thus not completed, and their meaning not fully known, thus not integrated adaptively; then we operate from these stories, these ‘psychic truths’. The task of the psychoanalyst is to understand how this psychic truth has come to be, not to question its existence. It is a fairly typical analytic experience that key stories are repeated throughout an analysis, where something new is added in each telling, fostering greater understanding of the stories within the story – as one becomes more able to observe and contain the usually powerful meanings and affects previously suppressed, the story can become the rich experience it was. In turn life ahead, and the new stories, as you experience them, can also be richer. There is not an unconscious to be revealed, but a capacity for thinking to be developed through an increased capacity to allow closer and closer contact with previously non-negotiable areas. When a patient brings up a new memory in psychoanalysis, my experience is that it is always something the patient has always known, and that it is the changing landscape of what is allowed into the patient’s mind that leads to the ‘new’ memory.

Most of the patients I have worked with have experienced cumulative trauma. A child’s egocentric view of the world inevitably leads to internal fantasies about themselves being the cause of any disharmony (too needy, too demanding, too  fussy), and the solution (I’ll look after others’ needs, not have any of my own), resulting in a conflict (guilt if they have needs, anger and resentment if their needs are neglected). In this way, it is not only the trauma that remains traumatic, but the feelings and fantasies stimulated by the trauma become part of a dangerous intrapsychic truth. Particularly the first 2-3 years of life could be considered the ‘dark ages of every subjective life story’ as these experiences cannot be linguistically encoded and cannot be remembered except as vague sensations or affect states, or action tendencies (e.g. to shy away or distract from any focus on oneself).

All patients come to psychanalysis with thoughts about certain events that were experienced as traumas, that helped form who they are. What is to be discovered, is what the patient has made of the trauma and its role in subsequent life. It is the working through of trauma, the comprehension of multiple psychic truths that has an impact on one’s psychic structures (the strengthening or expansion of the conscious capacities of the ego). It is your access to your own mind and all its tumult and capacity to understand and enact the need to search for psychic truths, not merely look for answers, that is the central part of psychoanalysis. It is what is more likely to lead to a patient capable of self-analysis as they continue their life. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake; to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out – it is an experience beyond thought.  (John Keats)