Read Your Unconscious
$147$197
You keep saying the same phrase. You make the same kind of slip, have the same fight, end up in the same kind of situation. Read Your Unconscious is an 8-week course in hearing what all of that is saying, the way a psychoanalyst listens: to your exact words, and to what keeps coming back.
What it sounds like
A woman noticed how often she said she was stuck: stuck at work, stuck in traffic, stuck in her apartment. That week she typed stuck where she meant struck in an email, and dreamed her car was stuck in snow outside her parents' house. When she wrote down what came to mind, she remembered her mother laughing, years earlier, when she brought up colleges out of state: you're stuck with us. She had lived within twenty minutes of home ever since.
One word, in a phrase, a slip and a dream, leading back to a sentence she'd heard at seventeen. That's the kind of reading this course teaches you to do with your own material.
How the eight weeks work
Five short lessons a week, five to ten minutes each, a read-back on Day 6, and a rest day on Day 7. Each lesson has one idea, a composite example, a short practice in your own words, and one thing to notice.
Week 1: What do I keep saying? The phrases you repeat and where they came from.
Week 2: What slipped out? Slips of the tongue and the thumb, forgotten names, lost objects, mishearings.
Week 3: What was the dream about? Taking a dream apart and finding what it wants.
Week 4: What is my symptom saying? When it started, what it gets you, and who it's for.
Week 5: Who am I talking to? Who your sentences are really addressed to.
Week 6: Why do I keep ending up here? The patterns you repeat, and your part in them.
Week 7: What do I want, and for whom? What you ask for, what you want, and whose want it was first.
Week 8: What scene am I living in? The fantasies you keep coming back to, sexual and aggressive ones included, and the sentence underneath them.
What you get
40 daily lessons and 8 read-backs, released one week at a time
A printable notebook with a page for every lesson, laid out for that day's practice
An email each time a new week opens
Access to the course after the eight weeks end
Questions
Do I need to know anything about psychoanalysis? No. Each idea is explained when it comes up, with an example.
Is this therapy? No. It's an educational course for studying your own mind.
Do I need to be in analysis? No. You don't need to be in analysis, or ever go into one, to learn to hear what your unconscious is saying. Analysis is where this kind of listening can go furthest, because there you're saying it out loud to someone trained to hear what you pass over.
Do I need to take Read Your Dreams first? No. Week 3 covers dreams. Read Your Dreams spends a whole month on them.
How personal does it get? Some practices ask for what you'd least want anyone to read, including sexual and aggressive fantasies. Your notebook is yours alone.
Will you read my notes? The course teaches you to read your own. You're welcome to send me your journal at the end. By sending it, you agree that I may use it in the future, heavily disguised and fictionalized, as inspiration for my work.
Who's teaching
I'm David M. Freshwater, LMHC, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. I see adults by telehealth in Massachusetts and Florida, and listening for what people keep saying is most of the work.