The Classic Methods

The most traditional therapy methods require deep emotional exploration and candid self-expression on the part of the client.

PSYCHOANALYSIS
Traditional psychoanalysis, sometimes referred to as "the talking cure", requires four or fives sessions a week (for several years), with the patient lying on a couch, not facing the therapist and talking about whatever's on her mind. The analyst interprets these thoughts and explores relationship between the patient's conscious and unconscious thoughts. Based on Freud's late-nineteenth century theory that by listening to a patient's free associations (i.e. mental connections between ideas, memories), the analyst can see the outline and patters of the patient's unconscious mind and there in find the root of her problems.

PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY
A less intense, more flexible once-a-week deriation of psychoanalysis, this approach is recommended for patients more interested in solving specific conflicts that in venturing deep into their unconscious. Here, the patient is also encouraged to talk about whatever's on her mind. The therapist, who sits facing the client, listens and interprets, as in psychoanalysis, but is freer to interview the patient and give advice on real-life problems.

ANAYTIC PSYCHOLOGY (JUNGIAN METHOD)
Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung, an associate of Freud in developing psychoanalysis, believed everyone's personality to be a product of her ancestral history - one part unconscious mind and o ne part an impersonal "collective unconscioius" that contains the history of the human species. Within the latter lie archetypes, or inherited ideas and thoughts, that will express themselves in symbols (the hero, the Great Mother) in a person's dreams and disturbed states of mind. In analytic psychology, the Jungian analyst, sitting face-to-face with the patient, encourages her to expand upon her dreams. The anaylyst will then focus on and translate the symbols in those dreams in an effort to integrate the different aspects of the person within the deeper unconscious.

GESTALT THERAPY
The therapist suggest the client perform certain activities (for example, dramatizing a troublesome character trait, fantasizing about an unavailable person, acting out drams) Gestalt therapy focuses on making the individual self-awareness. Gestalt therapy focuses on making the individual conscious of her responsibility for behavior, feelings and thoughts, and also of her capacity for change. Developed in the 40's by Berliln-born psychologist Fritz Perls, it's a combination of psychoanalysis and Gestalt psychology (a theory of personality that focuses on the individual's innate striving for a harmmonious pattern and stability within herself and her environment. "Gestalt" is a loose translation of ther German word for patter).