by Shamma B S

Created on: May 20, 2007   Last Updated: May 22, 2007

The main aim of psychotherapy is to bring repressed material into conscious awareness. Only then can it be dealt with, resolved and settled. This awareness known as insight, is the key to psychotherapy. Once a person gains insight into their hidden anxieties and conflicts, and also into the defenses they have used to repress them, then they are well on the way to solving their problems.

Gaining insight takes time. People usually have one or more 50 minutes sessions a week, often for several years. Therapists guide discussions so that clients discover their underlying problems for themselves. A number of techniques are used to develop insight. These techniques will now be examined.

In the free association, clients must not censor what they say. They must disregard the social conventions which direct conversation. In this sense, free association is free from the normal constraints which govern social interaction. Psychotherapists assume that unconscious mechanisms direct free association. In this way, free association is seen to reflect unconscious conflicts, hidden desires, repressed traumas - material which is too painful, too shocking, or too threatening to bring directly into consciousness.

Therapists assume that resistance is due to defense mechanisms keeping painful and threatening thoughts in the unconscious. Yet these are the very thoughts that therapists want to reveal and probe. They sometimes point out resistance to the client in an attempt to overcome it. Most clients find free association difficult and usually take some time before they can give a resistance-free account.

In session after session, therapists and client go over the same issue, interpreting and reinterpreting with the aim of gaining deeper insight. This process is known as working through. Clients are required to face up to sexual tensions and conflicts, traumatic childhood experiences with parents ans siblings, and interpretations which often cause and anguish. In order to deal with ans resolve internal conflict, gaining insight must be an emotional as well as an intellectual process. Clients must experience catharasis, an emotional reliving of reprocessed feeling. This leads to a release of emotional tension, a purging of the emotion which accompanies internal conflicts and repressed traumas. This makes it easier for clients to confront their problems and, hopefully, resolve them.

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