The term “psychoanalysis” recalls certain images in the popular imagination, despite its rather unpopular situation in the United States today. Almost everyone has heard of Freud, either in a psychology class or through more colloquial turns of phrase like the “Freudian slip.” Many cartoons depict therapy or counseling with the patient lying on the couch with the analyst sitting behind them. But none of this really has anything to do with psychoanalysis. Indeed, there is very little attention given to the theory or practice of psychoanalysis, especially in the clinical field.

A cursory glance at the history of psychoanalysis will tell you that psychoanalysis can mean different things to different people. The existence of various psychoanalytic schools over the last century is quite reminiscent of the Protestant Reformation, with each school/theorist claiming loyalty to or distancing Freud. For our purposes, we will stick with Freud’s own thoughts on the subject of defining what psychoanalysis is.

Freud gives the following advice to psychoanalysts who are asked this question in the New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis in 1932. He wrote:

“If you are so imprudent as to betray the fact that you know something about the subject, they fall upon you with one accord, ask for information and explanations…. You may perhaps expect an introduction to psychoanalysis to give you instructions, too, on what arguments you should use to correct these obvious errors about analysis, what books you should recommend to give more accurate information, or even what examples you should bring up in the discussion from your reading or experience in order to alter the company’s attitude. I must beg you to do none of this. It would be useless. The best plan would be for you to conceal your superior knowledge altogether. If that is no longer possible, limit yourself to saying that, so far as you can make out, psychoanalysis is a special branch of knowledge, very hard to understand and to form an opinion on, which is concerned with very serious things, so that a few jokes will not bring one to close quarters with it – and that it would be better to find some other plaything for social entertainment” (SE XXII, 136-137).

Given this rather terse response from Freud, perhaps we should refrain from the question altogether. As a clinician, I admit I have found it best to say as little as possible about what psychoanalysis is, because knowing what it is ahead of time does no one much good in the practice of it. Yet there is one thing that I do say, and it governs the framework of the treatment: “Say whatever comes to mind.” This imperative, which sounds far more simple than it actually is, invites the patient to speak freely, to engage in what Freud called “free-association.” Why is this not simple? Because one begins to recognize that there is a censor acting upon one’s speech, cleaning it up, making sure no mistakes are made, and that no surprises happen. Of course, in life as in speech, surprises do happen, and hearing ourselves anew can elicit new ways of being in the world.

What does the psychoanalyst want from the patient? Speech. Anyone who has experienced psychoanalysis will testify that they began to hear connections in their histories that were not there before, things that repeated without their knowing it. In short order, psychoanalysis reveals that we were “spoken,” often through the words used by our parents and caretakers. And these words from the Other are not without psychic and bodily effects, as they inhabit our own self-representations.

Perhaps this is why psychoanalysis is a notoriously difficult undertaking in the United States (“land of the free and home of the brave”) is because it invites us to encounter just how determined by the Other we have been, and that we were not as free or brave as we imagined ourselves to be. Psychoanalysis, in other words, is not about boosting/strengthening the ego. It invites us to a new freedom and bravery in speaking that we have not known until now. It is a path to self-knowledge, but not without a questioning of the self that is doing the knowing. Thus, psychoanalysis is a wager on life that requires letting go of the self that already thinks it knows.