It all started with Sigmund Freud’s theory and method of psychoanalysis.

He compared the mind to an iceberg, with the smaller part – the part “above the water”-
Being the conscious part, and the larger, unseen part, being the unconscious (or subconscious).

In the unconscious, Freud believed, were all the urges, passions and repressed ideas and feelings which, without us being aware of it, control our thoughts and deeds.

If someone experiences a trauma in childhood, it will be repressed- locked away in the subconscious – because it is too painful to recollect.

But people cannot make their painful memories disappear quite so easily. Although they may seem to have forgotten them, a childhood trauma may manifest itself in peculiar ways in an adult, often producing depression, anxieties and many other – sometimes bizarre – psychological problems.

This is where a psychoanalyst like Mike Whitenburgh comes in.

Under psychoanalysis, often using hypnosis, Mike 'digs around' – to use his own phrase- to try and uncover the deep-seated cause of a patient’s anxieties or neuroses, and then to try and release the trauma which is trapped in his or her subconscious.

Only by such release will the person be able to make a new start.

“I know I’m a last resort,” says Mike Whitenburgh. “Sometimes people even come to me after trying faith healers.”

“They try their own doctors first, and then the specialist, then they try the 'alternatives' such as faith healing. Then they end up at my door-step expecting me to say, 'I can’t help you.'

“The medical profession is seen as being there to provide an intellectual answer, but they can’t say anything except “Go home and pull yourself together. Grow up.”

“Grow up” is important. You are physically talking to a little child.”

The first major objective in psychoanalysis is to get rid of the “rational” mind.

People tend to intellectualise their problems, which is why traumas lie buried beneath a heap of adult logic.

Taking a shovel to a heap and tossing aside the logic is the only way to the core of the trouble-  and this means regression to childhood. 

“Analysis is a complete cure. I have never failed in analysis and it provides people with a surprising enlightment of themselves.  At the end of it, you certainly know a lot more about yourself.”

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