I am a Toronto therapist who works with children, teens and adults. Contemporary psychoanalytic (child and adult) therapy is an effective therapy for anxiety, (including social anxiety therapy). From this perspective, anxiety is essentially a “developmental” disorder, and because child and adult therapy from a psychoanalytic (or psychodynamic) orientation is essentially a developmental theory based in attachment theory, it is perhaps the most effective treatment for this disorder.
The gist of this model is that a combination of factors influences our development from infancy to the present to go in one direction or another, pick up this symptom, that tendency, character trait, attribute, and so on. While it may be true that we are born into the world with some predispositions, tendencies, drives and vulnerabilities based on our genetic code, early transcription of that code and intrauterine experience, current psychoanalytic theory finds that much of who were are today is the result of our actual experience being in the world, from birth to the present. Perhaps the most important aspect of this experience is our experience of being in relationship to others, as this is how we learn, grow, and become who we are. The vast majority of the connections in the brain that produce behaviour are formed after birth in the first years of life, and these connections are formed through relating to others: playing, talking, looking, touching, thinking, vocalizing, and just being. And so, if a person’s current personality is the result of experience in the world with others, than a developmental therapy such as psychoanalytic child therapy and adult therapy must go back and explore that experience to find out what happened.
It is believed that anxiety is also a problem that can be understood by adult and child therapists of the psychoanalytic orientation by exploring its early roots in the developmental history of the patient (often this experience is not just talked about, but also “lived”). It is my belief that most emotional problems can be understood developmentally in the context of our attachments with others whom we have had experiences with, which is why the concepts of attachment and developmental psychology have become such central concepts in our field of adult and child psychoanalytic therapy and psychoanalysis. Therefore, psychoanalysis can be considered an appropriate anxiety disorder therapy.
