Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic approach within the psychiatry field initiated by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). In simple terms, psychoanalysis can be considered one method of understanding the human mind's workings. In other words, the analyst helps the patient resolve their problems by understanding the patient's mind through conversation and returning this understanding to the patient.
Psychoanalysis assumes two things. The first assumption is that a person's current behavior, thoughts, emotions, etc., are not happening by chance, but are determined by various events that the person has experienced in the past (psychic determinism). The second assumption is that although the current and past events are not easy to explain by the conscious mind, understanding the unconscious mind helps to explain them. Since the unconscious mind usually dominates most of our mind, the part of the mind we are aware of, or the conscious mind, is a very small part of our entire mind.
The process of the unconscious can be discovered not by studying books about the unconscious, but by working with an analyst through conversation. This is because the contents of the unconscious are not light and easy to recall as they are usually heavy and uncomfortable. Moreover, during the analytical process, due to human resistance, the patient avoids such contents with great effort. Another human tendency is to repeatedly perform the same behavior or thoughts in the past, and the observation of the fact that various relationships with important figures that one person has created in the past are re-enacted with the analyst (transference) plays a crucial role in understanding the patient. This is why the help of an analyst is necessary to understand the unconscious.
Even if the patient discovers their unconscious and related problems through the analysis work with the analyst, it does not mean that their behavior immediately changes and that they reach a stable state they desire. This is the reason why psychoanalytic therapy needs to last for a long time (at least several years). This is because human nature tends to choose familiar and comfortable things, and changing our behavior and thoughts that we have repeated for decades as a habit is actually very difficult. During psychoanalytic work, our unconscious mind tends to show resistance to what we are trying to change, and it is precisely because of this human tendency that receiving psychoanalysis requires a high degree of perseverance and sincerity. This process of constantly exploring our problems and unconscious is called working through, and this process must be completed to some extent so that we can recognize what we really want (unconscious desire), what we need to give up or acknowledge, and behave accordingly. In other words, by realizing what we unconsciously want, we can find satisfaction in our lives.
Psychoanalysis does not mean that all of the unconscious can be fully understood, and even if the psychoanalytic work is done and the working through is completed, it does not mean that all the patient's pain disappears. However, what the patient feels after psychoanalysis is that they can cope with their difficulties better than before. This is because the patient's ability to handle difficulty (functions of ego) is cultivated through the psychoanalytic process. In other words, psychoanalysis helps the patient to recognize and acknowledge their difficulties in life and their limitations, and to become a more realistic and humanistic person.