How to Psychoanalyze Someone with Questions

How to psychoanalyze someone with questions? psycho analysis is a method of explaining and treating mental and emotional disorders by having the patient talk freely about himself or herself and especially about dreams, problems, and early childhood memories and experiences.

Psychoanalysis is a type of therapy that aims to release pent-up or repressed emotions and memories in or to lead the client to catharsis, or healing (McLeod, 2014). In other words, the goal of psychoanalysis is to bring what exists at the unconscious or subconscious level up to consciousness.

This goal is accomplished through talking to another person about the big questions in life, the things that matter, and diving into the complexities that lie beneath the simple-seeming surface.

Read also: Tips for Finding the Right Therapist

Method and Techniques to Psycho analyze Someone

A psychoanalyst can use many different techniques, but there are four basic components that comprise modern psychoanalysis:

1. Interpretation;
2. Transference analysis;
3. Technical neutrality;
4. Countertransference analysis.

1. Interpretation

Interpretation is the verbal communication between analysts and clients in which analysts discuss their hypotheses of their clients’ unconscious conflicts.

Generally, analysts will help clients see the defensive mechanisms they are using and the context of the defensive mechanisms, or the impulsive relationship against which the mechanism was developed, and finally the client’s motivation for this mechanism (Kernberg, 2016).

There are three classifications of interpretation:

1. Clarification, in which the analyst attempts to clarify what is going on in the patient’s consciousness;
2. Confrontation, which is bringing nonverbal aspects of the client’s behavior into his or her awareness;
3. Interpretation proper, which refers to the analyst’s proposed hypothesis of the unconscious meaning that relates all the aspects of the client’s communication with one another (Kernberg, 2016).

2. Transference Analysis

Transference is the term for the unconscious repetition in the “here and now” of conflicts from the client’s past. Transference analysis refers to “the systematic analysis of the transference implications of the patient’s total verbal and nonverbal manifestations in the hours as well as the c patient’s direct and implicit communicative efforts to influence the analyst in a certain direction” (Kernberg, 2016).

This analysis of the patient’s transference is an essential component of psychoanalysis and is the main driver of change in treatment.

In transference analysis, the analyst takes note of all communication, both verbal and nonverbal, the client engages in and puts together a theory on what led to the defensive mechanisms he or she displays. That theory forms the basis for any attempts to change the behavior or character of the client.

3. Technical Neutrality

Another vital piece of psychoanalysis is what is known as technical neutrality, or the commitment of the analyst to remain neutral and avoid taking sides in the client’s internal conflicts; the analyst strives to remain at an equal distance from the client’s id, ego, and superego, and from the client’s external reality.

Additionally, technical neutrality demands that the analyst refrains from imposing his or her value systems upon the client (Kernberg, 2016).

Technical neutrality is sometimes considered indifference or disinterest in the client, but that is not the goal; rather, analysts aim to serve as a mirror for their clients, reflecting clients’ own characteristics, assumptions, and behaviors back at them to aid in their understanding of themselves.

Countertransference Analysis

This final key component of psychoanalysis is the analysis of countertransference, the analyst’s reactions to clients and the material they present in sessions. According to Kernberg:

“contemporary view of countertransference is that of a complex formation codetermined by the analyst’s reaction to the patient’s transference, to the reality of the patient’s life, to the reality of the analyst’s life, and to specific transference dispositions activated in the analyst as a reaction to the patient and his/her material”

(2016).

Countertransference analysis can be generally understood as the analyst’s attempts to analyze their own reactions to the client, whatever form they take.

To engage in psychoanalytic treatment, the analyst must see the client objectively and understand the transference happening in the client and in their own experience.

How to Psychoanalyze Someone with Questions