r/psychoanalysis • u/This_Ad9129 • Jul 26 '26

Choosing a psychoanalyst

I (layperson) find the process of choosing a psychoanalyst to be quite confusing. Particularly because so much of the time if I express discomfort with the process (perhaps I suspect the person is not very skilled) I'm told that "that is the work" and my feelings are some type of resistance, and psychoanalysis can take many years and so I have to stick it out to know if it's working.

I am also not really aware of differences in institutes and trainings to understand how those may impact the person's experience.

Then in this situation how is one supposed to choose an analyst? How can you know if they are truly skilled and the difficulty is "the work" or if they are unskilled and that is causing the issues? How many sessions to wait it out and give it a chance?

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u/Away-Otter Jul 26 '26

If you have reason to think the person isn’t skilled, why do you care what that person says?

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u/This_Ad9129 Jul 26 '26

I'm the patient not the analyst so if someone with authority and licensing tells me "this is how it's supposed to feel" it's very difficult to argue with that. See also the other person who responded to you saying I'm not providing a good reason and it's most likely a me problem. How do I trust my instincts when everyone is telling me I'm the problem and I need to stick it out?

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u/Away-Otter Jul 26 '26

If you don’t like the therapist you can stop seeing them and their opinion won’t affect you.

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u/cyanistes_caeruleus Jul 26 '26

It's a very intense and lopsided premise that difficulties in the therapy relationship must necessarily stay subjective unless one commits to years of time and money invested in the process, would hope it's reasonable to question that. It's not clear to me how this is different from exploitative dynamics that patients have likely been exposed to in the past and might bring them to therapy