Protecting yourself from the feelings that drive you may give you a sense of control – but it comes at a cost. Working through them allows you to lower your defences

Recently I was walking to a session with my psychoanalyst when I realised I had just put my hand in my pocket to take out my house key.

Something I have learned from experience, as a patient in my analyst’s consulting room, and as a therapist to patients in my own consulting rooms, is that to build a better life you have to make your unconscious conscious.