I am in analysis. My formal analysis finished twenty-five years ago but I am still in analysis; the process goes on. Psycho-analysis is a living reality that cannot essentially be defined in terms of any ritual procedure. Emotional development and self-knowledge are two of its manifestations but the essential reality of which these are two of its manifestations is an absolute but an absolute that can grasped through symbols but is immediately perverted the moment it is conceptualized as existing in the symbols themselves. As soon as psycho-analysis is seen to be a procedure where someone attends at the consulting-room of a professional calling himself a psycho-analyst five times a week, on the couch, for fifty minute sessions. As soon as this is thought to be psycho-analysis we have fallen into the error of the misplaced absolute.
Neville Symington, Excerpt from the lecture The difference between Psychotherapy and Psycho-analysis
authentic analysis 