PSYCHOANALYTIC COACHING: INSIDE LOOK

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In my opinion, thanks to psychoanalytic theories and methods, the coach receives many additional opportunities to work with the unconscious limitations of his clients, with whom they meet on the way to achieving their goals. The clients themselves find answers to their numerous "why … why does it turn out like this, and not somehow differently?" and support in finding a connection between their "unconscious" and "conscious" management styles.

Thanks to these four years of research and systematization, today I can highlight the main advantages of the psychoanalytic coaching method:

1. Focus of work on the client's self-reflection ability, self-assessment and the environment, on the ability to understand the mutual influence of his actions on others and vice versa.
2. Understanding causation as a personal story of the client has shaped his ability to cope with current business challenges.
3. In order to change behavior in real life, it is necessary to investigate the relationships that arise between the coach and his client at the time of the session and identify the main patterns of behavior that interfere with the achievement of his goals. One way a psychoanalytic coach can understand what the client's problem is is to explore the nature of the relationship within the session. The client's problem is played out in the session through the attitude towards the coach. This is the reality that can be explored in relation to the client's business objectives.
4. In working in this paradigm, the working relationship between the coach and the client is extremely important. Creating a secure environment and trusting relationships empowers the client to talk about what they really care about. The coach helps his client to deal with fears, anxieties and inner limitations.
5. The client is looking for the truth about himself, the coach creates a space in which the client can calmly address his feelings and confront them. Thus, the coach develops the client's ability to understand himself and others and transfers / connects this ability with the client's real business tasks.
6. A psychoanalytic coach models for the client a new way of being, thinking and acting, helps to form a reflective coaching self and understand the connection between what is happening in his inner world and what is happening in his real world of solving business problems, managing and taking responsibility for of people.

Coaching skills

Another important question is, can you use coaching tools to fundamentally change your behavioral habits?

Can you once and for all awaken a champion within yourself who is ready to win?

Here we are talking, most likely, about the development of a certain set of skills, with the help of which a person will try to develop some of his own successful strategies, and they will lead him to the goals that were voiced by him as a request in the framework of working with a coach.

Then the question formulated at the very beginning can be clarified in such a way "can coaching help to develop a certain set of successful strategies for a particular individual, taking into account only his inherent psychological capabilities and limitations?"

In the psychoanalytic paradigm, behavior change is achieved through understanding the client's underlying internal conflicts. Recognition of emotions in the space of the session and associated unconscious blocks that do not allow the client to develop a particular skill helps to realize the impact of these emotions on the formation of the "necessary" behavior, to correct it in order to achieve the set goals.

And this is about the Freudian dynamics of the psyche.

And here's more about the economy.

According to Freud's economic theory, psychological energies follow the law of conservation, entropy and transformation, which increases or decreases the tendency towards entropy. That is, the psyche strives to obtain pleasure and avoid displeasure at any cost, which for our main question "can coaching help to develop once and for all a successful strategy of behavior inherent only to this individual" is key, and the answer to this question is unequivocal "no, it cannot ".

How psychoanalytic coaching can help as a skill development tool:

1. Call for help on the potential of emotions that arise in a person in connection with the development of a specific type of a particular skill.
2. To help process feelings and anxieties arising in connection with mastering this skill in the space of the session.
3. Help in the space of the session to become aware of these processed feelings and direct them to adjust / shift behavior in order to achieve the set goals.

Note to correct, but not change. Find an additional source of passion, strength, pleasure to develop this skill to help make a shift in behavior change. Realistic expectations from coaching can form the basis for future successful work.