Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a treatment modality that works to help clients explore and understand the unconscious forces that may be driving unwanted behaviors or thought patterns. The therapist provides a safe, non-judgmental space for the client to examine problematic patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving and relating that keep the client from living the life they want to be living. Together the client and therapist endeavor to understand and gain insight into how past experiences and relationships, may have helped to shape a client’s current outlook and way of interacting with the world and how that insight can be used to make meaningful change in the client’s present life.
Here are some helpful links that explore these concepts further:
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/practical-psychoanalysis/2015/03/is-psychoanalysis-right-for-you/
http://www.mindful.org/how-mindfulness-and-psychotherapy-work-together/
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindfulness/2016/05/three-common-mind-traps-that-sink-happiness/