Phobias

Instead of behavioral therapy, you may decide to enter psychoanalysis. A person who practices psychoanalytic therapy is called a psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysis focuses on the unconscious and the ways in which your unconscious affects your behavior. A psychoanalyst will probably ask you lots of questions about your childhood. He is trying to discover what desires and feelings you have repressed in your unconscious. He may pay particular attention to any sexual or aggressive memories that you have or any sexual or aggressive impulses that you remember feeling.

Your psychoanalyst will spend a lot of time trying to bring out your unconscious desires. If he can uncover your unconscious desires, you can begin to work through your internal conflict. When you realize what conflicts you are hiding deep within you, you can then start to resolve and overcome them.

Your psychoanalyst will focus on the causes of your phobia rather than the phobic behavior itself. Whereas behavioral therapy tries to change the behavior, psychoanalysis assumes that, if you can reveal the causes of the inner conflict, the behavior will go away. Psychoanalysis is a long-term therapy People spend months and often years in psychoanalysis.