As I have said before, I am not a purist. Nevertheless, I work with pieces chosen from some more traditional theorists. I might at times work with insights, which help the client understand “why it happened that way”: we also call this the intellectual component of Psychodynamic Therapy.

I will foremost promote the client’s corrective emotional experience so that he/she can “experience” rather than “acquire” information about his/her own self. This is a theme in Self-Psychology.

Sometimes also I might speak of Jungs’s personal and collective unconscious: the personal unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience special to each person, while the collective unconscious is a psychic system that collects and organizes those personal experiences. This content also gets passed from one generation to the next. It is inherited (like the history of one’s country).

Dreams can also be worked on at any time during the session. They are indeed the royal pathway to the unconscious.

I will, at times, use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy adjuncts (CBT) to help the clients cope with symptoms.