Psychotherapy

You gotta think about it the same way as if you want to see it. You gotta look at it sideways. Out the corner of your eye.  So you gotta think about it out the corner of your mind. It's there and it en't, both at the same time. If you want to see them jacky lanterns, the absolute worst way is to go out on the marsh with a searchlight. You take a bloody great light, and all the will o' the wykeses and the little sparkers, they'd stay right under the water. And if you want to think about them it don't do no good making lists and classifying and analysing. You'll just get a lot o' dead rubbish what means nothing. The way to think about the secret commonwealth is with stories. Only stories'll do.

(Phillip Pullman, The Book of Dust)

Analytical Psychotherapy is a process of telling stories. Stories about the way things have been, about the way things are, about the way things might be. Stories that come from the self, that need to be told, heard and responded to. They might be about what has happened or about what hasn’t happened.

It is not realistic to predict who will seek psychotherapy and I do not believe in the ready categorisation of human distress. Furthermore, it is not possible to define or prescribe the psychological needs of another. However, if you are considering psychotherapy you probably feel that something is amiss in your life. Perhaps you have a tangible and conscious experience of trauma or loss that continues to hold you back. Maybe you feel unsatisfied or unfulfilled but cannot understand why. These kinds of feelings often derive from our experience of relationships and, consequently, can best be understood in the context of a relationship. This is what psychotherapy offers, a relationship in which the telling of stories may reveal unconscious areas of experience, areas of experience that may be impeding or diverting the satisfactory progression of a life. 

The kinds of story and the ways they are told, be it through dreams, fantasies, memories, desires, aversions, inevitably manifest in the analytic relationship and it is through the understanding of this that unconscious phenomena emerge into consciousness where they can be evaluated and reworked.

Essentially, psychotherapy is a conversation. It may be a relatively brief conversation or a much longer one. Either way, it is a conversation that cannot be predicted at the outset.