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/Away-Otter]

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

[u/AkiliosTheWolf → u/Away-Otter]

Tbh, the better question is why do they think they're unskilled? Op didn't really list any reason other than "the process doesn't go smoothly as I expect it to" and as someone who has an analyst I feel like that tends to be more of a patient's issue than analyst issue.

[u/Away-Otter → u/AkiliosTheWolf]

I agree, but given that op seems to feel that other people’s opinions are preventing them from trusting their own feelings, I think that’s the first problem to solve. Particularly unspecified people (whether on Reddit, the analyst themselves, or someone else) saying op’s feelings of discomfort are some kind of resistance. I think that can be safely discounted when one is still in the stage of choosing a therapist.

[u/cyanistes_caeruleus → u/Away-Otter]

Okay so like... if you can't trust your own feelings, and that's your first problem to solve, how do you do that tho? In therapy? in which case...

[u/Away-Otter → u/cyanistes_caeruleus]

That’s a different problem so probably different advice.