Between the Lines: How Psychoanalysis Helps Us Hear Ourselves by Ann Shenfield

Recently someone I don’t know well, casually mentioned the difficulties they were having in their family then as she continued she said, “When I tell you this, you’ll probably start psychoanalysing me.” I’ve noticed lately that this is how people use the word around me psychoanalysing as a verb, as if to indicate something that might be both incredible and a bit intimidating. As well as to suggest that I might have insight into something they might ordinarily not see or wish to reveal.  As if they are hiding something—or almost, from themselves. Something that might be at odds with how they usually see, or wish to present themselves.

I don’t consider what I do to be psychoanalysing. Psychoanalysis is not something that is done to another person, it’s what happens in a room between two people in dialogue. I have some insight though, or perhaps a certain knowledge of how a person might be operating in ways that go against their own stated interests which, at times, they might not acknowledge to themselves.

Psychoanalysis is about the words we use that we’re less aware of. It looks at the way we speak and the parts of ourselves we aren’t ordinarily attuned to. When we say to ourselves—I don’t know why I did that or, if we ask why we seem to make the same mistakes repeatedly, we are asking questions that fall into the psychoanalytic realm.

Psychoanalysis can help make explicit the ways in which we unconsciously act against our interests, as if to undermine ourselves. It’s a process that actively engages with the unconscious, via language in slips of the tongue or in dreams and associations, ultimately making us better equipped to read our own actions. It is a process of considered listening to the words we choose to use and rehearing them via an analyst, to learn more about who we are and what it is we seek.  Psychoanalysis can help ease our suffering—it can also offer insight into the ways in which we author our own stories.

Ann Shenfield
Ann Shenfield Psychoanalysis PsychotherapyI offer accessible fee based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy on Thursdays at Kundalini House and can be contacted on 0425797337, or my email is ann@annshenfield.com