Psychoanalysis in long sessions is a Freudian psychoanalysis.
Its aim is the study of the psyche, more specifically of the unconscious and its determining role in our lives.
It is carried out according to the method of free associations, of Freud, in a couch and armchair setting.
Specificity
Psychoanalysis in long sessions is characterised by important technical innovations introduced by Silvio Fanti.
The long sessions have two essential and inseparable characteristics: a duration of three hours and a frequency of at least five times a week.
The introduction of technical supports during the analysis. This is the study, by the analysand, of various documents relating to their life:
- the family tree
- personal and family photographs
- floor plans of the places where they have lived
- various writings (correspondence, drawings from infancy, diaries, …)
- listening to sessions recorded during the work.
Thanks to the conjunction of these technical innovations, the analytic work acquires greater depth and coherence, allowing the analysand to trace their life in a continuity from uterine-infantile (and ancestral) experiences up to the present. The analyst, on their part, acquires a clearer pattern of the analysand’s vital repetitions and sees their true identity appear.
An "under the microscope" psychoanalysis
Thanks to a session rhythm which facilitates free associations, the person on the couch can recount and describe their current and past story down to the smallest detail.
The aim of this method is to bring about, re-living them, the emergence of the experiences, desires, and emotions of the pre-natal period and infancy. Indeed, because they have been repressed in the unconscious, we repeat them throughout our lives without realising it, most often to our disadvantage, as in the case of neurosis.