Читать книгу SNAP! - Gary Small - Страница 13

Thankfully, less than 10 percent of the population suffers from a true personality disorder that debilitates their lives. However, the other 90 percent of us are not necessarily happy with each and every aspect of our own personalities. Many of the patients I see believe that one or more of their character traits are holding them back from reaching their professional goals, forming satisfying and supportive relationships, and remaining mentally and physically healthy. And for the longest time, there didn’t seem like much we could do about it, outside of the slow and laborious changes that can sometimes be achieved through psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis is a branch of psychiatry and psychology that has been successful in helping some patients with personality traits that disrupt their lives. It involves intensive, long-term treatment approaches and can also help some patients with borderline, narcissistic, or other personality disorders. In Freudian psychoanalysis, a patient with problems or mental symptoms verbalizes their free associations, fantasies, and dreams to the analyst. The analyst then interprets the unconscious conflicts that are thought to cause the patient’s issues. Once the patient gains insight from the analyst’s interpretations, the symptoms often improve, but it can take years of nearly daily treatment, which is expensive and obviously very time consuming. Also, controlled systematic trials proving the effectiveness of psychoanalysis in altering personality traits are limited.