North Star Conversations Transcript: What Psychoanalysis Actually is—Alan Levy, PhD

Brandon Gimbel (00:00)

I think a lot of people have a preconceived idea of what psychotherapy is. And a lot of times it's from the New Yorker cartoons of what is depicted as psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic therapy. I think it'd be helpful to hear from you, a psychoanalyst, how you think of psychoanalysis and perhaps how you would compare it to psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Alan Levy (00:24)

It really boils down to this: It really is a meeting of minds where two people try to make sense out of one's experience. And that could be experience outside the office, experience in the relationship, past, present, future. And to do that, you need another person who listens carefully, who understands something about how the mind works, and give the opportunity to create an environment where you can explore this. And one of the differences in analytic work is it's great if it's helpful. And if it's not, not just, "well, why wasn't it helpful?" But what came up as you were trying to do something different? And how does that resonate with the rest of your life? How do you understand that? Why was it helpful or not?

Brandon Gimbel (01:10)

You're talking about where to focus our curiosity.

Alan Levy (01:14)

Yeah, curiosity is essential. And when that fails, it becomes also analytic material. What happened that we stopped being curious? Something occurred. What might that be? And what are the sources of it? And so rather than it being a problem, it's actually part of the work.