1. How is a psychoanalyst different from a psychologist, psychiatrist, or any other mental health practitioner?

 

This is the top FAQ. The best way to answer it is through a simple metaphor. If one were to imagine any given patient as a tree, and the presenting problems could be anything under the sun: depression, anxiety, anger, change in sleep / eating / libido patterns and so on, we can call that “bad foliage”. Most mental health practitioners are trained to only treat, essentially, “foliage” problems that brought the patient in. So, a counselor, social worker, or psychologist can prune “bad foliage” to a degree usually through teaching coping skills. An issue becomes that the coping skills are never designed to stop symptoms, only manage them. A psychiatrist can offer the patient fertilizers aka medications to make the symptoms look better, but the cause of the problems remain. Finally, a psychoanalyst is trained to treat the roots of the symptoms. The result is that the only way to health season after season is through achieving healthy roots!

 

2. How long is the typical session with Dr. D’Uva?

 

“The analytic hour”, dating back to Dr. Sigmund Freud himself, is fifty minutes in duration. The fifty minute time slot also applies to supervisions, couples and family sessions. Interventions and group sessions are ninety minutes each.

 

3. How often should I see my psychoanalyst?

 

It is a personal decision as to how often one sees their psychoanalyst, or any doctor. Dr. D’Uva encourages his patients to invest in their therapy at least once weekly, but patients are welcome to schedule appointments every two weeks, once a month, or on an as needed basis. It ultimately depends on the individual’s comfort level.

 

4. What is symbolic communication?

 

When examining the complex relationship between body and mind, Dr. D’Uva aims to further the patient’s understanding and mastery of the role of emotions in health in addition to how symptoms form. With the belief that the past does shape one’s present (but does not have to dictate the future) often early in life a person is exposed to a particular feeling either too intensely or too often, which can become the basis for a present day mental health issue. One example of this is often children of parents who screamed and yelled almost as much as they actually talked can develop anxiety and restlessness issues as they become grown themselves. This often happens before the person has sufficient language to understand their feelings as they are exposed to more yelling, etc. Through symbolic communication to the psychoanalyst, the patient often invites those same unconscious feelings in the treatment room symbolically, or through emotions. This sensation and unconscious communication, through the language that the patient does have, to the analyst gives the doctor the basis of what questions to ask the patient to begin to unlock the unconscious in order to become conscious. This is the goal of psychoanalysis.

 

5. What is internal conflict resolution?

 

Internal conflict resolution can be understood as a process of correcting what is called negative emotional experiences that can occur at any point in life, not exclusive to just childhood. Examples of this struggle are trying to deal with the breakup of any relationship or divorce, losing one’s job, the loss of a pet or loved one, trouble with school or at work, and many more. The point is that when someone or something else hurts you, that hurt often lingers in you long after the person or relationship is actually gone. The greater problem is when this hurt begins to affect multiple facets of your life. People may notice you appear depressed or are less talkative, and you feel like you are suffering so deeply. When this hurt gets internalized and you are at war with yourself, internal conflict resolution and processing of the layers of your life that this event touched will begin the healing process.

 

6. What is the value of working with dreams?

 

Many patients seek help for puzzling, terrifying, creative, or recurring dreams, but the fact is that a vast majority of therapists do not receive any clinical training for dream work. Dr. D’Uva has specific training in the realm of working with dreams. In brief, there are two contents regarding dreams. Dr. Sigmund Freud stated that the manifest content is the literal subject matter of the dream, while the latent content is the hidden psychological meaning of the dream. The early psychoanalysts recognized the power of dreams, strongly calling for therapists to work with patients’ dreams in therapy to illuminate both conscious and unconscious conflicts. In Dr. Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900/1966) he suggested that the primary purpose of dreams is to satisfy primitive wishes that may be unacceptable to our conscious minds and may therefore be repressed. According to Dr. Freud, however, we cannot censor our thoughts during sleep, and thus these unconscious wishes emerge in our dreams, often in symbolic form (for example, rather than dreaming of an overbearing boss one might dream of a threatening lion). With this philosophy in mind, Dr. Freud referred to dreams as the “royal road to the unconscious”. Dr. Freud then examined reported dreams through the use of free association and offered interpretations.

 

Presenting an alternate view, Dr. Carl Jung (1964) believed that dreams were a creative expression reflective of issues that are unexpressed during waking life. Dr. Jung believed that dreams could provide a vital means of making the unconscious conscious by making dreamers aware of hidden feelings. Moving on to modern psychoanalysis with Dr. D’Uva, an approach to dream work reflects a more individualized approach to understanding dream metaphors, which is a divergence from Dr. Freud’s use of generalized themes for symbols and an improvement upon Dr. Jung’s idea that dreams were compensatory. Dr. D’Uva views dreams as an opportunity to express and explore new knowledge from the patient in order to gain insight about events and repetitions in their life.