ABSTRACT
While it shares many therapeutic aspects with other clinical approaches in the broad range of psychotherapies, and does so beneficially, psychoanalysis has central qualities that define it, that set it apart as unique. As a result, psychoanalysis is defined by how an analyst explores, not by what the analyst then finds. And the patient learns that how. As a result, psychoanalysis is defined by how an analyst explores, not by what the analyst then finds. And the patient learns that how. Psychoanalysis has expanded explosively, growing from the insights of a lonely genius to the turbulence of so vast and diverse a field of learning that we now name it pluralism. What underlies an approach as specifically psychoanalytic rather than simply broadly therapeutic is the central concern for the power and import of unconscious forces at work.
