Malahat Rahmatian

My perspective on the therapy room:

Psychoanalytic therapy is a deep, complex process focused on discovering and understanding the unconscious, childhood experiences, and recurring relationship patterns. Through the analytic relationship and the safe space it provides, this approach helps identify inner conflicts, defenses, and unconscious influences on current behavior and feelings. Its main aims are deeper insight, psychological transformation, and a greater capacity to face life's difficulties constructively. Despite its challenges and complexities, the process has the potential to support fundamental, lasting psychological change.

Compared with classical psychoanalysis, modern psychoanalysis places greater emphasis on interpersonal interactions, relationship dynamics, and the patient's lived experience in the present. Classical psychoanalysis primarily sought to discover the unconscious through dream interpretation, free association, and transference in a largely neutral setting. Modern approaches give more importance to the analyst's active role, countertransference, and emotional interactions within the relationship. They also tend to consider cultural, social, and historical factors and offer treatment in a more flexible, humane way. These developments allow modern psychoanalysis to address current difficulties and support patients in living in the present, alongside exploring the past.