By admin 
It is known that someone who ‘sits on the couch’ is in therapy, but most therapists these days do not ask their clients to lie down. The first time mine did that, I resisted. I didn’t want to be on display or see her reactions. Moreover, the idea seemed old-fashioned. Sigmund Freud was inspired to use the bank for more than a century after watching dramatic hypnotherapy demonstrations by his teacher Jean-Martin Charcot. In psychoanalysis, Freud thought that a therapist who is out of sight would help people gain access emotions or memories that could be suppressed. (He also said that he could not “bear being stared at by other people for eight hours a day.”)
Many of Freud’s ideas about the unconscious didn’t hold up, but maybe he was on to something with the bank, as I discovered when I finally followed my therapist’s suggestion. The sofa may not be for everyone, but it may be worth a try.
Today, therapists’ offices still almost always have a couch. For his book, In the shadow of Freud’s couchMark Gerald, a psychologist trained in psychoanalysis, took portraits of therapists in their offices, and “it was a rare room without a couch,” he told me. “Someone once said that they never actually used the couch with their patients, but if they didn’t have a couch, they wouldn’t feel like a psychoanalyst.”
In the shadow of Freud’s couch: portraits of psychoanalysts in their offices
By means of Gerald, Mark
Despite the ubiquity of the therapist’s couch, research on cases in which it is and is not useful is limited. Some patients inside case studies report missing their therapist’s face when they lie down, while others have used the bank to avoid direct face-to-face communication. Even Freud wasn’t always strict when it came to the bank. He also took walks with his patients; he famous analyzed the composer Gustav Mahler during a four-hour walk through Leiden.
But for me – and I suspect many others – lying down occasionally can provide some relief from the social aspects of talking to a therapist. The relationship between a therapist and a client will not disappear completely, and that dynamic can be useful to explore in therapy as well. Yet many therapy clients place too much emphasis on interpersonal dynamics. On social media, people to make jokes about how much they want to get an A+ in therapy or become a therapist laugh; I’ve felt the same pressure myself. That stress can be reduced if you lie down and are physically unable to scan your therapist’s face for signs of approval or displeasure. And this at a time when many people have switched teletherapystaring at your therapist’s face (or your own) over Zoom can feel like a work meeting gone wrong.
On a very simplistic level, the bank literally offers a change of perspective. The ancient Greeks and Romans lay there during it banquetswhich created an atmosphere of comfort and intimacy, says Nathan Kravis, a psychiatrist and historian of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College who is also the author of On the couch. In the modern world, lying down means that the conversation you will have in therapy is a different kind of interaction than the conversation you have with family or friends. It is a time to face difficult thoughts, admit shortcomings, or explore desires without the relational obligations to those we know in our “real” lives. “The strangeness of it is part of its power,” Kravis told me. “It really has no parallel elsewhere in our social world.”
On the Couch: A Suppressed History of the Analytical Couch from Plato to Freud (Mit Press)
By means of Kravis, Nathan
Lying down can also satisfy people’s hunger for a more creative and humanistic form of therapy. In recent years interest in psychoanalysis made a drama out of it comebackalthough the approach still accounts for a minority of therapy sessions. Other therapeutic methods, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, aim to change thoughts and behaviors that aren’t working for you; Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, focuses on self-examination. I have done CBT for years and it is very effective at solving problems. Yet something about a therapeutic practice that is not so goal-oriented can be healing. As I began to lie down, I felt myself choosing to make space for reflection, grief, processing, and developing intimacy with my own mind in a world where such actions are not usually a priority.
Lying down for therapy sessions could make a practice that is expensive in both time and money even more permissive, and I’m sure some people just wouldn’t like it. But it is available for everyone to try at least once. Lying down is a technique, not an end goal, Ahron Friedberg, a licensed psychoanalyst and certified psychiatrist, told me. It can be a way to cultivate comfort, intimacy and reflection, or to speak in a way you are not used to – to yourself or to a therapist.
In Gerald’s office, he offers choices. There is a chair directly across from where he is sitting. There is a sofa, recently replaced because the original one had sagged from years of use. Some of Gerald’s patients always lie down; others save it for when they feel overwhelmed. One patient usually sits upright, but curls up in a ball on the couch when she is going through a difficult time. Kravis said he talks to a new client face-to-face and then gives him the opportunity to lie down after a session or two. “It’s not mandatory,” he said. ‘You are not attached to the couch with Velcro.’
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