There are moments when we seem to know exactly what needs to change.
We know that a relationship is no longer working. We know that a particular habit leaves us feeling worse. We know that we keep responding to certain situations in ways we later regret. We may even know, quite clearly, what we would like to do differently.
And yet, knowing does not necessarily lead to change. Sometimes we find ourselves returning to the same kinds of relationships, having the same arguments, avoiding the same things, or making the same decisions that we had promised ourselves we would not make again.
This can be confusing. It can also be tempting to understand it as a failure of willpower.
If I know what I am doing, why can’t I simply stop doing it?
Psychoanalysis approaches this question differently. Rather than assuming that knowing should be enough to produce change, psychoanalysis asks what might be happening in the space between what we consciously say we want and what continues to take place in our lives.
Knowing is not necessarily the same as wanting
We often speak about desire as though it were straightforward.
“I want to be in a healthy relationship.”
“I want to stop worrying.”
“I want to leave.”
“I want to feel more confident.”
But our relationship to what we want is rarely so simple.
A person may sincerely want to leave a relationship and, at the same time, find themselves unable to do so. Someone may desperately want to be closer to another person while repeatedly doing things that create distance. Someone may say that they want to succeed, yet find themselves repeatedly withdrawing when success becomes possible.
This does not necessarily mean that they are secretly choosing the opposite of what they consciously want. Rather, it suggests that the conscious self does not have complete control over what moves us. There can be something at work in our words, decisions, relationships and symptoms that we do not fully recognise. This is one of the points at which the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious becomes important.
The unconscious is not simply a hidden part of ourselves containing information that we have forgotten. It can appear in the ways we speak, the things we repeat, the contradictions in what we say, the mistakes we make, and the situations we seem to encounter again and again. Sometimes what we cannot explain is precisely where something worth listening to begins to emerge.
When a pattern does not feel like a choice
Repetition can be particularly difficult to recognise because each situation may feel new. A new relationship is a new relationship. A new workplace is a new workplace. A new conflict is a new conflict. And yet, after some time, something begins to feel familiar.
The same disappointment.
The same anxiety.
The same kind of distance.
The same argument.
The same feeling of being misunderstood.
The same ending.
When this happens, it is easy to say, “I always choose the wrong people,” or “I always sabotage myself.”. But these explanations can sometimes close the question too quickly. Psychoanalysis is interested in opening the question again.
What exactly is being repeated?
What position do I find myself occupying when it happens?
What do I expect from the other person?
What do I say—and what do I leave unsaid?
What do I seem to be seeking, even when the outcome is painful?
And perhaps most importantly: what keeps me attached to something that I consciously say I want to leave behind?
The repetition may not simply be an obstacle standing between us and the life we want. It may have a meaning that has not yet been heard.
The unconscious is not simply what we do not know
It is common to think of therapy as a process of discovering the hidden reason behind our behaviour. Perhaps there was an experience in childhood. Perhaps we developed a particular belief. Perhaps something happened that we have forgotten.
Sometimes understanding aspects of our history can certainly be important. But psychoanalysis is not simply a search for the explanation that will finally make everything make sense. Knowing why something happens does not necessarily make it stop happening.
A person can understand perfectly well that their fear of abandonment is connected to earlier experiences and still find themselves behaving in ways that reproduce that fear. The question therefore becomes more complicated. It is not only:
“Why am I like this?”
It is also:
“What happens when I speak about this?”
What words do I use?
What contradictions appear?
What do I avoid?
What do I repeat?
What happens when I begin to say something I had not intended to say?
Psychoanalytic therapy gives particular importance to this movement of speech. Something may emerge not because the therapist provides the correct explanation, but because speaking creates the possibility of hearing something differently.
Why repetition can persist even when we suffer from it
One of the more difficult things to recognise about repetition is that we can suffer from something and still remain attached to it. This can seem contradictory. If something causes us pain, why would we continue returning to it? Psychoanalysis does not assume that everything we do is organised simply around what is good for us or what would make us happier.
Human beings can become attached to ways of relating, behaving and experiencing that are painful. This is part of what makes the symptom so interesting from a psychoanalytic perspective. A symptom is not merely something that needs to be removed. It may also be a formation in which something of the subject’s desire, conflict or enjoyment is involved.
This is why simply telling someone to stop repeating a pattern can miss something important. The question is not only how to eliminate the repetition.
It is also: what function does this repetition have?
What does it make possible?
What does it avoid?
What does it maintain?
What does the person obtain from it, even when they consciously experience it as suffering?
These are not always comfortable questions. But psychoanalysis does not necessarily begin from the assumption that everything that needs to be changed is already known.
When “I don’t know” becomes important
There can be a particular moment in therapy when someone says:
“I don’t know why I keep doing this.”
It can sound like an impasse.
But psychoanalysis can treat this not simply as a lack of information, but as an opening. Instead of immediately filling the gap with an explanation, we can stay with the question.
What follows the “I don’t know”?
What associations come to mind?
What has already been said?
What has not been said?
Sometimes the most significant material does not arrive as a clear insight. It can emerge gradually through the movement of speech. This is one reason psychoanalytic therapy does not always proceed by giving immediate advice or solutions. The aim is not to tell someone what they already ought to know. It is to create a space in which something that has not yet been thought, spoken or heard in quite this way can begin to emerge.
Change may begin somewhere other than where we expect
When we are caught in a pattern, we often want to know how to break it. We want the technique, the answer, the decision that will finally make things different. Sometimes this desire for a solution is itself worth listening to. What if the question is not simply:
“How do I stop doing this?”
but:
“What is it that keeps returning here?”
This does not mean that psychoanalysis asks someone to remain trapped in their suffering. Nor does it mean that change is impossible. Rather, it suggests that change may involve something different from simply replacing one behaviour with another.
It may involve coming to hear differently what has been organising our choices, relationships and repetitions. A person may begin by saying, “I don’t understand why I keep doing this.”. Over time, the question can become more precise. And sometimes it is this movement, from an experience that seems inexplicable toward a question that can be spoken, that allows something new to become possible.
Psychoanalytic therapy and what keeps returning
Psychoanalytic therapy offers a space to speak about what has become difficult and to listen differently to what emerges. The purpose is not to provide a formula for breaking unwanted patterns, nor to impose an explanation from outside.
Instead, therapy can make it possible to approach the repetitions, contradictions and difficulties of one’s life from another position. What initially appears to be simply a problem to eliminate may begin to reveal something about the way we are involved in it. And perhaps this is why knowing is not always enough. Sometimes we already know what we want to change.
What remains to be discovered is what, in us, does not simply follow from what we know. That is where another kind of question can begin.
The Underthought | Psychoanalysis Practice
Psychoanalytic therapy invites you to speak about what has become difficult in your life and to listen differently to what emerges.
In-person sessions in Sydney and online across Australia.
