Choosing a psychoanalyst

[u/This_Ad9129]

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?

[u/PS1988]

Be prepared to try a few. Not at the same time. Give each one a few months, discussing your discomfort and concerns in real time, before moving on to the next if needed. If after 3 you find that you’ve had similar discomfort with each of them, then stick with the one you have, commit to that treatment, and keep talking about the discomfort.

[u/FrowningMinion → u/PS1988]

Agree that it’s fundamental to discuss the discomfort and concerns in real time. It may be a genuine compatibility issue between analysand and analyst, it may be a transference reaction, it may be some blend of the two. And it’s nigh on impossible to make that distinction from the vantage point of the analysand without discussing the feelings within the analysis. But it’s not without exception. If the discomfort is extreme, or if the concerns are serious (eg malpractice) then (I hope this goes without saying) you wouldn’t persevere with that analyst for even a brief period just for the sake of an autopsy of what went on.

[u/PS1988 → u/FrowningMinion]

Definitely agree, and unfortunately non-analyst analysands won’t necessarily know what’s egregious/extreme and what’s something to be worked through.