8.4:SADHANA AND  PSYCHOTHERAPY:

Psychotherapy is a general term referring to therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client. The therapeutic contact is deliberate and professional aimed at healing psychological distress .

 Psychotherapy aims to increase the individual's sense of ones own well-being. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient.

Under the broad umbrella of psychoanalysis there are several theoretical orientations regarding human mental development. The various approaches in treatment called "psychoanalysis" vary as much as the theories do. The term also refers to a method of studying child development.

 The core issue is the relationship between the patient and the therapist. In therapies like cognitive and behavioural therapy the therapists role is role is more active than in the psychoanalytic therapies. The therapies may be interpretative,re-educative or supportive.

Freudian psychoanalysis[i] refers to a specific type of treatment in which the "analysand" (analytic patient) verbalizes thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst induces the unconscious conflicts causing the patient's symptoms and character problems, and interprets them for the patient to create insight for resolution of the problems.

The analyst confronts and clarifies the patient's pathological defenses, wishes and guilt. Through the analysis of conflicts, including those contributing to resistance and those involving transference onto the analyst of distorted reactions, psychoanalytic treatment can hypothesize how patients unconsciously are their own worst enemies: how unconscious, symbolic reactions that have been stimulated by experience are causing symptoms.

Typically a psycho-analytic therapy lasts for several months or few years. The analysis of  transference and counter transference between the therapist and the patient are important in the understanding of the mental dynamics of the patient. Resistance in the therapy is also an important element in the progress of therapy.

 There are many rules and guidelines in the treatment process which have to be followed strictly. The therapist patient relationship outside the treatment setting and inside the treatment room is a good example of such regulation.

These methodology,relationship,resistance and rules are similar to a guru-sishya relationship in the siddhantha sadhana.  However in the sadhana the individual takes a subjective journey inwards whereas in psycho-analysis there is an objective element. That is the recording of the therapy and the clinical goals that has been set before the treatment.

 Nevertheless the various steps described in the sadhana system comes very close to a psycho-analytic treatment in several ways.

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[i] The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following:

1.        besides the inherited constitution of personality, a person's development is determined by events in early childhood;

2.        human behavior is largely influenced by irrational drives;

3.        irrational drives are unconscious;

4.        attempts to bring these drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defense mechanisms;

5.        conflicts between conscious and unconscious (repressed) material can result in mental disturbances such as neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression etc.;

the liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the consciousness (via e.g. skilled guidance, i.e. therapeutic intervention).

  Sadock, Benjamin J. and Sadock, Virginia A. Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry. 10th ed., Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007, p. 190. Michels, Robert. "Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: A Changing Relationship", American Mental Health Foundation.