When people ask, "What is psychoanalysis?" they usually want to know about treatment, although the term may also refer to a body of theory and a method of investigation. As a therapy, psychoanalysis is based on the fact that individuals are often unaware of many factors that determine their emotions and behavior. These factors may create unhappiness, sometimes in the form of recognizable symptoms and at other times as troubling personality traits, difficulties in work or in love relationships, or disturbances in mood and self-esteem.

Because these forces are unconscious, the advice of friends and family, the readings of self-help books, or even the most determined efforts of will, often fail to provide relief.

Psychoanalytic treatment helps the individual understand, emotionally as well as intellectually, these unconscious motivations that lie behind distressing feelings and behavior, as well as their historical origins. In an ongoing close partnership with a psychoanalyst, typically at a frequency of four or five times a week, a sustained and often intense relationship develops, in which the individual may re-experience underlying sources of difficulties in a way that is open to mutual and productive exploration. Through this process, he or she is enabled then to modify distressing patterns or reactions and thereby deal better with the realities of adult life. Psychoanalysis has also been adapted to the special capacities and vulnerabilities of children and adolescents, through the use of developmental understanding and techniques suitable to their respective stages of life.

Although some problems, such as reactions to stressful life events, can be handled effectively with short-term treatment, longstanding and complexly determined problems require long-term treatment. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a similar, though less intensive form of treatment than psychoanalysis, indicated and effective when more intensive treatment is not required. Both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy can be combined with psychoactive medication, when appropriate.