Existential Therapy and Psychoanalysis: Understanding Your Mind

What is Psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis was developed by Sigmund Freud in the early 1900s. The main idea is that a lot of our thoughts, behaviours, and emotions are influenced by the unconscious mind.

In other words, part of our mind operates outside our awareness.

Experiences from childhood, family relationships, and even forgotten memories can continue shaping how we act as adults. Sometimes people repeat the same emotional patterns without really understanding why.

Psychoanalysis tries to bring those hidden influences into awareness. This often happens through:

• Open conversations about life experiences

• Talking about dreams

• Exploring past relationships

• Looking at emotional patterns that keep repeating

  
  

The goal isn’t just to analyse the past. It’s to help people understand themselves more deeply so they can make healthier choices in the present.

What is Existential Therapy?

Existential therapy comes from philosophy as much as psychology. Thinkers like Viktor Frankl and Rollo May helped shape this approach.

Instead of focusing mainly on childhood memories, existential therapy looks at how we face the big questions of life, such as:

• What gives my life meaning?

• Why do I feel anxious or lost?

• What kind of person do I want to become?

  
  

This approach recognizes that some level of anxiety is part of being human. We all face uncertainty, freedom, responsibility, and the reality that life is limited.

Rather than trying to eliminate those feelings completely, existential therapy helps people understand them and use them as motivation to live more authentically.

How These Approaches Help in Therapy

Both existential therapy and psychoanalysis give people tools to better understand themselves.

Psychoanalysis often focuses on the past and the unconscious, helping people uncover patterns that developed earlier in life.

Existential therapy focuses more on the present and the future, encouraging people to reflect on meaning, responsibility, and personal choices.

In practice, many therapists draw ideas from both approaches. Therapy then becomes a space where people can reflect, question their assumptions, and slowly build a clearer sense of direction in their lives.

And despite the intimidating names, the goal is actually pretty straightforward: helping people understand themselves and live with more awareness, freedom, and purpose.

Human beings are complicated creatures. Therapy doesn’t magically solve everything. But sometimes having a thoughtful conversation about life, meaning, and our inner world is enough to start changing how we move through it.