@chewedpencil
what are you curious to know? 
Why? - I suppose at the beginning I would have said "because I want to train as a psychotherapist or psychoanalyst and this is a requirement. But now I would say because I am curious about myself and understanding myself better, as well as needing help with the things about me that make me difficult to live with or the things that stop me growing in life. How to manage my emotions. How to understand my relationships etc.
What? As in what do you do? You go every (week) day at the same time to your analyst's consulting room. They let you in at the start of your session (always 50 mins long). You lie down on the couch, they sit close to you just behind you where you can't see them. You say whatever comes into your mind.
The main thing it is hard to get a sense of unless you have experienced it is the way it mirrors the mother-baby relationship - analyst is the mother, patient the baby. It stirs up all sorts of infant feelings and dependence, and how you react to this as a patient is really what is going on in the analysis.
That's it really, but out of that simple premise so much emerges!
Rather as a baby grows emotionally through the experience of having emotions in the presence of a more mature person who can help process , so the patient grows in the containment and thinking provided by the analyst.
Its an incredible privilege though extremely emotionally painful at times.