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what exactly does that look like?

I like to think of the psychoanalytic process in terms of Design Thinking. In a way, psychoanalysis is like Design Thinking applied to the self. Yes! Therapy, in many ways, is like re-designing or remodeling for an updated self. But most importantly, it is learning how to be able to do this process yourself when you’re done with therapy. With that knowledge, you can always be flexible and be updating your self according to your preferences and situations….adapting.

Through deeply understanding, naming and empathizing with your experiences, you liberate them from assumptions and ways of relating and behaving. You can evolve new ways of understanding the past and the present, and of living in it. Just like in Design Thinking, we work through these steps in a methodical way using psychoanalytic theory and technique. These are the steps:

Empathize: with past and present issues

Define: the problems, thinking, feelings, beliefs

Ideate: challenge assumptions, identify unconscious thoughts and ways of relating and understanding, create ideas for innovative solutions, or new thoughts which spawn new feelings, new vantage points, new ideas

Prototype: start creating solutions (making micro-adjustments), collect data on how they work, when they work, with whom they work; keep making micro-adjustments with ease and flexibility

Test: keep testing these solutions by checking in.  Life cannot be improved with one idea or a single solution. Keep adapting. Do you feel good in a deep, satisfying and peaceful way?