Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis

The Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis is established with the aims of furthering the practise of psychoanalysis, making psychoanalysis available in the community, researching in the field of psychoanalysis and training psychoanalysts. It operates in the clinical and scientific field created by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

As a clinical practice, psychoanalysis works through talking in a way that produces truthful knowledge. By analysing symptoms and problems the patient (or analysis) and the analyst come to understand the unconscious conflicts which cause and maintain the analysis suffering. Working together, they bring to consciousness the unconscious subjective truths (as Freud defined the goal of psychoanalysis) which previously produced unhappiness and crippling symptoms, but once revealed with the interpretative assistance of the psychoanalyst, offer the opportunity for new choices and creative change.

The psychoanalytic theory on which the ACP bases its practice and training has been developed over more than a hundred years since its foundation by Freud. The ACP’s practising analysts have undergone a rigorous training over several years that involves detailed study of this theory, clinical experience under supervision with a more experienced analyst and a personal psychoanalysis. It is this personal experience which particularly distinguishes the psychoanalyst, because in it practitioners learn in a practical, singular and intimate manner about the working of the unconscious and confront their own desires and limitations. This enables them to meet conflicts and symptoms in analysis without prejudice and with the skill and readiness to analyse and uncover truth together.


PACFA Section Psychoanalysis/ Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Website link www.vicnet.net.au/~acp/